


The Grinch Who Sold Christmas

by darcylindbergh



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 25 Days of Christmas, A Family Can Be A Lawyer An Angel and Their Whole Town, Alternate Universe - Hallmark Movie Setting, Alternate Universe - Human, Christmas Fluff, Crowley's a Lawyer, Falling In Love, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, Gabriel's a wanker, M/M, Unnecessarily Complicated References to Canon, bad family relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 22:35:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 26
Words: 60,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21636568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darcylindbergh/pseuds/darcylindbergh
Summary: Anthony J. Crowley, a big-time attorney from London, is sent to small-town Tadfield to close a deal before Christmas that would sell out half of high street to a fancy developer and put him up for partner at his firm. The deal will run the local businesses out and change the landscape of the town forever, but that’s none of Crowley’s business; he’s just doing a job.But as the town invites him to share in their lives, their hopes, and their holiday celebrations, and as the enigmatic Aziraphale invites him to share in something more, Crowley starts to wonder: if everything has its price, is he still willing to pay what this deal will cost?
Relationships: Anathema Device/Newton Pulsifer, Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 2586
Kudos: 1662
Collections: Good Omens Human AUs





	1. Ice Skating

**Author's Note:**

> It's a Christmas advent collection! The prompts I'm using will be in each chapter title, and my full list can be found [here](http://forineffablereasons.tumblr.com/post/189399507253/tis-the-season-and-tis-a-bingo-this-is-the).

Anthony J. Crowley hated a lot of things, and he was very good at it. 

Took a special sort of skill to muster up enough feeling about things to hate them, he rather thought. Most people went through life with a sort of apathy about their surroundings that they occasionally exaggerated into hate, but Crowley didn’t have time for apathy. Tourists, tacky souvenir shops, cameras that made a big clicking sound when their buttons were pressed, gossip mags, the royal family, adverts that strobed unholy light at innocent people just trying to walk down the street, incompetent drivers, scented soaps and hand lotions in hotel rooms, scratchy shirts, dating apps, book editions that used a corresponding film poster as cover art, people who were early to meetings, people who were late to meetings, pop music, burnt coffee from popular chain cafes that would have over-roasted their beans if the beans were equipped with klaxon alarms to tell when they were done, and galoshes: Crowley hated it all. 

He especially hated Christmas.

Christmas, in Crowley’s opinion, was one great big capitalist free-for-all hiding under a thin veneer of religion and mandatory good cheer, plunging one-half of the country into debt as they desperately tried to keep up with the other half, complete with sky-rocketing rates of disappointed children, domestic violence, and bigotry all wrapped up in the tidy bow of nosing-into-other-people’s-business. The insistence on being nice when nobody bothered the other eleven months of the year made for the worst of false kindnesses and competitive do-gooderism, complete with simpering well-wishes from people who wanted to be remembered in your shopping and gifts of ten-quid bottles of wine from people who remembered you in theirs, and then come the first of the year it was back to business as usual, leaving everyone ten pounds poorer and richer in nothing but cheap, bitter wine. Load of bollocks, if you asked Crowley, but no one ever did. 

Until this year.

“Oi,” Beez had said, poking her head into his office. “Christmas. Thoughts?” 

“Load of bollocks,” he’d answered, without looking up from his computer. 

“Got any plans? Never mind, I don’t care.” She’d come in, slapping a file on his desk. “I need someone to take this file. Developer wants to close their deal on a property before Christmas. Small village called Tadfield. Just a purchase on a stretch of the high street, putting in condos, offices, probably a Costa or a Pret, that sort of thing. You’re going down.” 

“Rural account?” He hated the rural accounts; the countryside _really_ wasn’t his thing. “Isn’t that Dagon’s?” 

“Dagon’s busy over the holiday,” Beez had said, with a look that dared Crowley to ask _busy doing what_. Something involving Aruba, electric blue drinks with little umbrellas, and Beez herself, no doubt. “And I’m not asking, I’m telling. You’re going.” 

Crowley had looked up. “Hang on, I don’t know the project,” he’d protested. “How am I supposed to have a whole sale in hand before Christmas?” 

“By doing your bloody job,” Beez had hissed, and she wasn’t just Beez standing in his office, but B.Z. Prince, the cutthroat negotiator and ruthless solicitor that had made Morningstar & Prince a force to be reckoned with. Luke Morningstar may have been the devil himself—and plenty of solicitors certainly thought he was—but Beez had been the one to organize his powerful personality into the firm they ran today. “You make this deal, and you’ll be looking at partner. You don’t make this deal, you’ll have a lot more problems than your high score on Solitaire.” She glanced pointedly at his computer. “You’re on thin ice.” 

It wasn’t Solitaire, actually; it was Minesweeper, but Crowley had doubted that Beez would appreciate the distinction just as he doubted that she cared about the rest of his book of business with the firm—very successful, if he could add, and he knew with Beez he very well could not. “Yes, ma’am,” he’d said, with a winning grin. “I’ll do my best, but I don’t know how fast I can get it done. New counsel, new clients—might take a while.” 

“Before Christmas,” she’d repeated, glaring. “Three weeks. Do the wining and dining, use the holiday angle to get everybody to compromise, you’re not stupid.” High praise from Beez. “I expect to see signatures in my email on Boxing Day. I’ll be checking.” 

Non-negotiable, then.

So Crowley had closed up his office, packed up his files, and headed out. 

Small English villages had learnt early how to capitalise on Christmas, and Tadfield was no exception. It was only the first of December, and already the lamp posts were festooned with greens and red ribbons as Crowley rolled past, looking for parking; already the little shop fronts had snowflakes and candles and Santas lined up in their displays. It was all a sham, honestly, intended to draw in the city folks for a weekend away and charge three times as much for a scarf marked as hand-made just because a real person had operated the machinery. 

He’d gotten the last room at the inn and pub on the high street, even though he might’ve preferred the Comfort Inn just off the highway, because it was one of the properties that would be affected by the sale if it should go through and it was better to know your enemies. There were a handful of little shops pressed close together, all owned by the prospective seller—a cafe, an Oxfam shop, a bookstore, an off-licence—and those proprietors would obviously be the most likely to raise a fuss and make a sale difficult, especially during the holiday season; Crowley would need to know them, at least a little, if he meant to defeat them.

The lights up and down the street were all on as Crowley drove by, making everything look warm and inviting and a little magical with atmosphere. Crackling loudspeakers piped old Christmas carols into the night. A group of kids rode bicycles down the middle of the street, laughing and yelling at one another, scarves flying behind them like wings.

Everything had a little bit of a run-down look to it underneath their garlands and fairy lights, as if the shops were all holding their breath for the holidays, hoping that the shopping season would put their grimy little businesses back into the black after months of wallowing in the red. He wondered if they all knew that their livelihoods were about to be sold from underneath their feet, and if they knew that no amount of praying was going to bring them a Christmas miracle to save them.

That was none of his business, Crowley reminded himself. He was here to do a job. He was here to close a deal. He was here to be put up for partner at one of the top firms in London, and he was here to do it whether it was Christmas or not.

 _You’re on thin ice_ , Beez had said, but that was fine.

Crowley would just learn how to skate.


	2. Hot Cocoa

Crowley woke bright and early on his first morning in Tadfield.

Crowley did not enjoy waking bright and early. He particularly did not enjoy _bright_ , under any circumstances, and early was a time of day that ought to happen exclusively to other people. But the window curtains of the Tadfield Inn and Pub were nothing but yellowing old lace, and even as Crowley grimaced and searched for his sunglasses he had to admit that they fit the general aesthetic: floral wallpaper, spotty WiFi, furniture old enough but not quite fine enough to be considered antique, and a proprietor that had introduced herself as _Madame_ Tracy, which was either risqué or old-fashioned; he wasn’t sure, and didn’t think he wanted to know.

Should’ve stayed at the Comfort Inn after all. 

Didn’t matter, he told himself, forcing himself out of bed. At least being up early would give him a chance to familiarise himself with the lay of the high street before his first meeting with the clients. He understood Zuigiber, Sable & White to be a small but highly specialised luxury developer with a reputation for putting up projects in idyllic villages and either improving or ruining the general atmosphere by bringing in commuters and corporate chain shops, depending on where you sat in relation to the cheque. Tadfield’s weaknesses in economy, infrastructure, residential population, and so on, could all be spun to his clients’ favour. He just had to know which way to twist.

The high street was busier in the early morning light than it had been when he’d gotten in last night, though the crackling loudspeakers were still playing carols. The pharmacy on the next block over seemed to be doing all right, and there was a Greggs tucked away between the post office and the bank that seemed to do the same brisk morning trade that Greggs’ everywhere seemed to do. There was a newsagents further down, and what looked like a late-night pizza and kebab, or maybe it was chips and gyros; a group of mothers with strollers jogged along, and another group of grandmotherly types dawdled in front of the post office. Crowley wondered if they saw themselves in each other—the cycle of a life lived and died, lived and died, never changing, never moving. Static. 

Crowley hated static. 

On this side of the high street, the properties were quiet. Very quiet. As if they’d always been quiet, and always would be. _This development will be a blessing on this town_ , he thought. 

Only the cafe appeared to be open, and so Crowley popped in for a coffee and a shot at their WiFi, which he could only hope was an improvement on the Inn’s. It was one of those places where old men dotted the counter seats and griped all morning about the good old days, eating the same greasy breakfasts that had been served there for the last sixty years or more; there were ornaments hanging in odd arrangements from the ceiling, and a lot of gold tinsel to go around. He ordered a to-go cup from the woman at the counter, who wore a name-tag that said, inexplicably, _Anathema_ , stirred in some cream and sugar, and turned to go check out the local war memorial—

—and promptly ran straight into someone else. 

“Oh!” A hand shot out to grab his. “So sorry!” 

There was agonisingly long, slow-motion moment where Crowley slammed his eyes shut, waiting for the coffee to hit. He was going to be burnt. He was going to be soaked. It was not going to be an attractive look. He was already trying to remember where the nearest hospital was, and trying to calculate whether he would need A&E and whether he would even be able to drive if his hands were burnt, what the recovery time would be, whether he’d be calling Beez for back-up, whether he would lose his job because someone in a bloody cafe in bloody Tadfield couldn’t watch where they were bloody well going. He was—he was—

He dared to look, but yes: he was still holding onto his coffee, safe in its cup, safe in his hand, which was safe in someone else’s. 

Someone Else was wearing a bow-tie. An _earnest_ bow-tie, which was something else these days, and a certain sort of professorish look, complete with a waistcoat and a pocket watch and a concerned expression that was obviously prone toward absent-mindedness and probably some rambling on about whatever took his fancy on any given day. “Are you quite all right?” he asked. 

Crowley tried to snarl. A lifetime of living in London _wanted_ to snarl, and to jerk his hand back and tell Someone Else off, but the adrenalin of his life flashing before his eyes and the warmth of the hand on his had taken his response out at the knees. He strongly suspected that what his face was doing was a slow relieved grin sort of thing instead. “Yeah,” he said, looking at his hand, held tight in Someone Else’s. “Yeah, I’m fine.” 

Someone Else followed his gaze, flushed pink, and the hand slid away. The hand, the flush, the gaze: he was—well, attractive wasn’t the right word, exactly, because people who wore earnest, professorish bow-ties just, well, _weren’t_ , but his face was—the line of his nose, the definition of his mouth, the fluff of white-blond curls—interesting. Arresting, maybe.

Very arresting.

And, well—hadn’t Crowley just been thinking that he needed to familiarise himself with the town? _Residential population included?_

“Let me get you a cup of coffee,” he said, collecting himself. A cup of coffee, a little conversation, a few pointed questions, and Crowley could have all the information he needed to swing his negotiations right into his client’s favour. “It was a miracle, you catching me like that; we could’ve both been scalded.” 

“Oh,” Someone Else shook his head, with a brushing-off sort of laugh. “It was no bother—”

“Would’ve been a bother to me,” Crowley answered shortly, already turning back to the woman behind the counter. “Another coffee, if you could?” 

The woman looked at Crowley, then looked back at Someone Else, and back at Crowley, putting two and two together and coming up with a number she apparently quite liked. She grinned and leaned in conspiratorially, watching Someone Else like she was about to whisper a secret about him. “He usually takes hot cocoa.”

Crowley looked over as well, smiling as if he’d heard a secret, even though they were talking at a perfectly normal volume. “Oh, does he? No caffeine, even at this hour?”

“Keeps odd hours, our Aziraphale.” 

_Aziraphale_. That seemed unlikely. Crowley looked at the woman’s name-tag again, which still read _Anathema_ , and wondered if he’d accidentally walked into a horror-film type of situation. Christmas cult, perhaps? That would’ve surely come up in the research. And _our_ Aziraphale: that seemed unlikely too, given Someone Else’s age—closer to Crowley’s—and the woman’s—closer to twenty. Affectionate, then, not romantic, and definitely part of the game. 

“Ours?” he repeated, eyebrow raised.

“Oh, honestly,” Someone Else cut in, increasingly flustered, “I’m not _anybody’s_ ,” and then he seemed to realise what he’d said, gave Crowley what he probably thought was an extremely subtle once-over, and turned crimson. “Just the cocoa, please, Anathema.” 

“Hot cocoa it is, then,” Crowley agreed. Anathema rang it in, gave them both a look like she really _wanted_ to give them both a thumbs-up, but restrained herself and instead disappeared into the kitchen. Crowley slid into one of the counter seats, and gestured for Someone Else to join him. “Crowley,” he introduced. He hated when people called him by his first name, and so tended not to give it.

“Aziraphale,” Someone Else returned properly, and he didn’t ask after Crowley’s first name, and Crowley _didn’t_ hate that. “You didn’t have to do that.” 

Crowley shrugged. “You didn’t either.” 

“I _did_ , or you’d have been burned,” Aziraphale pointed out, a little primly. “Clearly.” 

“So it’s a protesting sort of guardian angel,” Crowley said with a grin, and all right, he was laying it on a little thick, so sue him. A bit of flirting never hurt anyone. Normally he hated flirting—it was so _pointless_ , the whole thing of it, trying to be clever, bantering with someone as a form of trying to sort out whether you liked them when really all he needed to know was what they thought about the practicality of driving vintage cars, whether they knew what a Châteauneuf-du-Pape was, and whether they were likely to be bothered by late nights at the office. So far nobody had met the criteria—though he hadn’t had a serious date in probably fifteen years, so maybe that was on him. 

This wasn’t flirting, though. This was reconnaissance. Crowley could do reconnaissance. And if it happened to be reconnaissance with an arresting face, that was just the luck of the draw.

“I hardly think that doing the right thing warrants guardian angelship,” Aziraphale was saying, though with a little smile of his own. “I didn’t expect to become responsible for you, you know.” 

Crowley laughed. “All right, all right,” he said, placating. “Changing the subject, then. You lived here long? In Tadfield?” 

It was Aziraphale’s turn to shrug. “Born and raised,” he said, then he gave Crowley a look, eying his black denims, his dark sunglasses, his snakeskin shoes. “You’ve lived here—all of five minutes?”

“Just visiting for the holidays,” Crowley explained smoothly. Anathema came back in through the kitchen doors, another to-go cup in hand, and Crowley took this as his cue—he might be grateful to her for the quick assist, but he suddenly wasn’t dying for an audience. “Could use someone to show me around, actually. If you’re not busy.” 

Aziraphale laughed, a bit nervously, then seemed to realise that Crowley was perfectly serious. “Oh, erm,” he hedged, taking the cup from Anathema, who stared rather wide-eyed and meaningfully at him. “I—sure. I mean, of course.” 

“Fantastic,” Crowley said. “I’ve got to run, have a few meetings today, but tomorrow’s wide open. Meet me right here, say, ten o’clock?” 

“Ten o’clock,” Aziraphale nodded. “And thank you for the cocoa.”

“Thanks for saving the coffee,” Crowley returned, standing and gathering up his things. “See you then.” 

Halfway to the door, though, he stopped, turned back around. Aziraphale was nursing his cocoa like it was a whisky, as if he weren’t quite sure what had just happened; through the haze of shimmering fairy lights and gold tinsel, he really did look a little heavenly. “Oh, and angel?” Crowley called back to him. “I’m not, either, right now. Just so you know.”

Aziraphale turned, blinking at him. “Not what?” 

“Anybody’s,” Crowley said, and then he was out the door. 

*

Two hours later, Crowley was knocking on the enormous oak doors of Tadfield Manor, settled in the hills on the outskirts of town like a bad omen. The drive had been wreathed in fog, despite a clear morning in the village, and he wished he’d had a hot cocoa like Aziraphale’s now, to keep him warm in a cold place like this.

He was being ridiculous, he told himself, shaking off the nerves as a butler showed him into a hall decorated with great tusks and antique rifles. His clients were gathered around a desk, bent over blueprints and glasses of amber alcohol, though it was barely even noon.

“Mr Crowley,” Carmine Zuigiber said, giving him a sleek smile. “Welcome to our War Room.” 


	3. Winter Wonderland

It was just a bit of reconnaissance.

All part of the job, really. Lots of people had jobs. Lots of people had jobs they weren’t particularly wild about and did anyway, because the idea of having a job that was one hundred percent likable was a pipe dream fed to teenagers on the Internet by balding non-profit CEOs who’d inherited their start-up money from their grandparents and still made half a million pounds a year, and lots of people had jobs they had never particularly envisioned themselves doing, because nobody had ever gone up to their gran at their fourth birthday party and said, “Listen here, gran, I’m going do payroll for a mid-level corporation in Birmingham when I grow up,” and yet there were hundreds of people working in payroll departments in mid-level corporations in Birmingham every day. It was what it was.

There were things Crowley hated about his job, obviously—pushy clients with illegal ideas about how to accomplish their business goals, pushy clients with morally corrupt though somehow not illegal ideas about how to accomplish their business goals, long hours spent pouring over ridiculously complex contracts written more in Latin than English, the sheer amount of bloody paperwork—but there were also things Crowley did not hate about his job. It was challenging, for a start, and interesting; the pay really was quite good, even for London, and Crowley was really quite good at doing it, and when he managed to pull it all together, when he got exactly the right pieces in exactly the right order, when the compromise worked and the negotiations settled and the deal fell together—there was nothing quite like it.

And it was never the same case twice, never the same call, never the same project. It was always something new.

Walking up the high street of a half-forgotten village in Oxfordshire alongside a bloke with a bow-tie and a propensity toward giggling was _definitely_ new.

“All right: Tadfield. Let me guess,” Crowley said as they set out up the street toward the square, nudging Aziraphale’s arm. “Farmer’s market on, let’s say, Thursday mornings. School panto twice a year; probably some sort of 5K race in the spring, starting there--” he nodded at the squat little clock tower in the middle of the square-- “and running through the countryside ending victoriously at the local pub for a cause nobody can ever remember. One listed building within five miles, two within fifteen; local population runs toward old farming families who haven’t had land to their names in decades but still remember it and the more recalcitrant, unsociable Oxford types. Two pubs, one grocer, the pharmacist is a gossip.” He grinned out of the corner of his mouth. “How’d I do?” 

Aziraphale took a sip of his cocoa to hide the fact that he was smiling, which was not at all successful. “You cheated,” he accused. “You’ve looked all that up.” 

Crowley laughed. “Hey, not all of it,” he defended, and Aziraphale laughed too. “Bit about the pharmacist was a lucky guess.” 

They’d met, as planned, at the cafe at ten o’clock that morning, or thereabouts—Crowley had been there at ten, at least. Aziraphale had been fifteen minutes late, still pulling his coat on by the time he’d rolled through the door, already apologising, soothing Crowley’s irritation with a smile that could only be called beaming. Crowley didn’t think he’d ever seen anybody _beam_ before. Must be they didn’t teach you that in London.  
  
Anathema had slid a coffee and a cocoa across the counter, already ready to go. She threw a look at Aziraphale that Crowley only caught out of the corner of his eye but which may have been a wink, and Crowley had bustled Aziraphale out of the cafe quick as he could. She was going to be a menace, that one. He could tell. 

Together he and Aziraphale went up the high street, ambling and exchanging the sort of first-meeting conversations Crowley'd perfected in a million networking events—Aziraphale had been raised in town, Crowley had been raised in London, if you could calling it _being raised;_ Aziraphale did _not_ recommend the Queen's Head pub but Garrison's wasn't bad; weather's been frightful, have you had it bad here?—before turning off to pass the local war memorial Crowley had intended to see the day before, which Aziraphale knew more about than the people who’d built it probably had, and in turn Crowley offered something about the ding in his car that had happened during the Blitz during the early 1940s, all documented in the repair records, and how he’d left it during the restoration job just because he thought it was worth remembering: that the whole world could come down around your ears, and things would still survive. 

A heavy silence fell between them as they looked over the memorial. _Real mood killer, that one_ , Crowley berated himself, but then Aziraphale turned and said, with cautious delight, “Your car is _how_ old?” 

There were a lot of things in the world the Crowley hated, but he did have a few bone-deep loves, and the Bentley was one of them. He told Aziraphale about finding her as they walked on, about the state of her when he’d first seen her, about doing the research overseeing every step of the restoration, about getting into the garage himself when he was able to help pull staples out of the old upholstery or even to just hold the bloody wrench. It was easy to talk about the Bentley. 

It was easy to talk to Aziraphale.

“You must be very proud,” Aziraphale said, teasing, as they came to a stop outside the historic stone church, just outside the main stretch of town on a hill that was probably called Priest’s Hill or Beggar’s Knoll or whatever. A group of men were bullying an enormous fir tree into the churchyard. “A regular old vintage car mum.”

“You would be too, if you had her,” Crowley shot back.

“I probably would,” Aziraphale agreed. The men with the tree were not having a great time of it; their ropes and pulleys had the better of them at the moment. “There used to be a big Christmas celebration here every year,” Aziraphale said, nodding at them. “Whole of Tadfield, just transformed into a winter wonderland. Christmas market down in the square, fairy lights in all the trees, skating down in the park. The Manor put it all on—Tadfield Manor, do you know it? Just outside town.”

And: _oh, right_ , Crowley remembered, grimacing. _Reconnaissance_. 

“I know it,” he said slowly. “One of your old listed buildings, right?”

Aziraphale nodded. “For a long time it was an event hall sort of space, rented out for parties, weddings, that sort of thing. They did huge weekend getaways for tourists, tree lightings and Christmas balls and everything. Then the hall was bought out, turned back into a private residence. Some of the town tries to keep up with the spirit of it—” he gestured at the men fighting the fir, who were losing— “but, well. The local parish’s tree lighting ceremony doesn’t have quite the same marketing value, does it?”

It wasn’t an especially unusual story: the money-making industry moves on, and all the money with it. Whatever growth and strength Tadfield might have had would be sapped away entirely without the development Zuigiber, Sable & White were planning, but with a promised sponsorship for a Christmas festival, Crowley could definitely turn this in his favour. As far as gossip went, this was an absolute win—and if he could swing the deal on time, he was willing to bet the cost of a shiny new plaque with his name above the word _Partner_ that it would make Aziraphale’s face light up like a Christmas tree.

“Come on, angel,” he said, just to make Aziraphale grin, stepping away from the church and the tree and the memories. Everything Aziraphale remembered might be gone, but that didn’t mean it had to be lost. “What’s good for lunch in this town?”

It was just a bit of extra reconnaissance, really.

After all: a job wasn’t everything.


	4. Baking

Back to things Crowley hated. 

Clients. Over-involved clients. Pushy clients, slimy clients, insistent clients. Clients who thought they were the only client you had; clients that thought they were the smartest client you had; clients that only retained you to say yes when they proposed something because they thought they knew more than you did; clients who asked the question, _well, is it legal or isn’t it?_

Zuigiber, Sable & White were, among the three of them, all of these clients. 

_This should’ve been a job for a whole bloody team,_ Crowley thought, driving away from Tadfield Manor with a headache. _No wonder Dagon was eager to get rid of them._

And they were _creepy_ , was the thing, they were _chilling_ , they were _weird_ , like looking at ghosts made corporeal but only if you looked right at them and they disappeared whenever his back was turned. All three of them moved preternaturally quietly and all three of them seemed particularly prone to staring; they continuously exchanged looks amongst themselves that sent chills down Crowley’s spine, as if they were plotting the end of the world instead of a three-story condo and office combination development in a rural village, as if they had nuclear commands tucked away in the wood paneling of their damned spooky house that would blow Oxfordshire right off the map.

“Creating goodwill in the community,” Crowley had been saying, “would go a long way toward making a deal once the negotiation begins in earnest, _and_ help with the acceptance and support while the project is in progress.”

The three had stared at him as if unseeing. “Goodwill,” Sable had repeated. 

“Acceptance,” White had said. 

Zuigiber had sat back in her chair. “The community is not in control of this property,” she’d said. “We’re not interested in them.” 

And that had been that. 

Clients that only saw numbers; client that only saw dollar signs; clients that only saw their own little selves in their own little bubbles: Crowley hated these things. It made the projects _boring_ , and stale and meaningless and static, static, static, and it gave Crowley a headache to even think about it. 

The Tadfield Inn and Pub was, thank God, a pub, and it was darkly lit only by piles of fairy lights here and there, _thank God_ , and Crowley was the only person in it, _thank even bigger God_ , even if it did smell like boiled sprouts. He didn’t even bother going up to his room first; he just slid into a bar stool and waved at Madame Tracy, who had been studying the multi-coloured string lights she had been hanging up over a window, and she came over. He must have looked as wrung out as he felt, because she left the overhead lights off, put on a sympathetic pout, and patted his hand. 

“Whisky,” Crowley said. 

“You know what you need,” Madame Tracy said, wagging a finger at him. “A nice cup of tea.” 

“Or a whisky. Whisky’d be nice.” 

Madame Tracy patted his hand again. “Tea,” she said firmly. “You stay right here and I’ll bring you a cuppa.” 

Crowley didn’t have the energy to fight with her, even though this was ostensibly a pub and not some gran’s living room. Instead he slumped down in his seat and waited, trying to shut his mind up, until she came back with a cup and saucer and a couple of misshapen biscuits. “Been baking all day,” she said, with a nod at the biscuits. “Nothing like a homemade biscuit to cheer up a bad day.” 

The tea was milky and hot; the biscuits buttery and crumbly. Crowley took a long sip, then dunked half a biscuit and took a bit. She was right, of course: there was nothing like tea and biscuits. He hadn’t realised he’d been so cold until the tea took hold of him, spreading warmth through his core, and his headache was forgotten almost immediately. It was a little like being tucked in, actually: covers pulled up around his ears, a kiss on the forehead. The odd piles of fairy lights, waiting to be strung up in their lines, made it feel almost fae, like some underground hiding place with impossible magic lights. Even the pervasive smell of sprouts suddenly seemed comforting. This was not a pub built on numbers, Crowley thought. This was not a pub built on who controlled what and whether they could pay for it. 

He swallowed his tea, hard, and managed a weak smile at her. “Thanks. You were right.”

“Always am.” She still had her sympathetic pout on, and now she tilted her head in that way bartenders everywhere had. “Long day, was it?” 

“The worst.” 

“You want to talk about it?”

“Not really.” He couldn’t, obviously. Confidentiality and suchlike. 

But Madame Tracy didn’t press. Instead she patted his hand again with a smile, and went back to her window, considering the fairy lights she’d been hanging up. “Heard you went out with Mr Aziraphale yesterday,” she said carefully. 

News travels fast in a small town, obviously. There was never any chance that Crowley, the newcomer in all black that wore his sunglasses even indoors, could walk up the high street in broad daylight with _anybody_ and not be asked about it. He sipped his tea and took another biscuit and watched Madame Tracy in the grimy mirror over the bar as she reached up on her toes to rearrange her lights. 

But Crowley found, quite surprisingly, that he didn’t hate that she had asked. There was a smile in her voice, and a sense less of _prying_ and more of optimistic happiness, and she kept her eyes firmly on the window, giving him the privacy he needed to smile into his cup of tea.

“Yeah,” he said finally, clearing his throat. “He was just showing me around a bit. New in town, and all. Seeing the sights. Warning me off the pharmacist.” 

Madame Tracy just hummed, saying nothing, and reached for another puddle of lights to string up over the next window. She didn’t have a stool or a ladder or anywhere near enough height, but she did have the spirit--she just tossed the lights up, hooking the belly of the string over the be-laced curtain rods, again and again until the whole length of the window was accounted for.

“He was nice,” Crowley added. “Is nice, I expect. Really into his hot cocoa, isn’t he?”

At that Madame Tracy laughed. “And other things too,” she assured him. “But your gut instinct is right, I think. I’ve known him since he was just a little thing, and yes, he’s always been such a nice one.” Now that the fairy lights had been hooked up onto the curtain rod, she stood on her tiptoes here and there to adjust it, just as she had with the other string. “It’s only too bad, you know—how often the world goes bad for the nice ones.” 

_What do you mean_ , was right there on the tip of Crowley’s tongue, but he didn’t ask it. Aziraphale was nice, and kind and unexpectedly funny, but Crowley had noticed that he kept himself close to his own chest. He hadn’t offered a last name; they hadn’t talked about what he did for a living; he hadn’t given up his deepest secrets and darkest desires. And Crowley was, after all, just a strange man in a strange place, passing through—here to ruin the village with corporate real estate developments and get on with his life. He’d be gone before they even struck ground. 

“Tell you what,” he said to Madame Tracy, sliding off his barstool. He was at least eight inches taller than she was. “I’ll get the lights if you get me more of those biscuits.”   
  
She patted his cheek this time, instead of his hand, said, “There’s a love, thank you,” with a knowing smile, as if he had passed some kind of test, and left him to it.

In the end, the pub glowed under the fairy lights in pink and orange, and she never did charge him for the tea.


	5. The Nutcracker

“En garde!” 

The sound of sticks slamming together echoed through the park, along with wild shrieks and the cascade of laughter. A group of kids chased each other down the trails, and Crowley caught bits and pieces of the game: something about mice and tin soldiers and a thrown shoe. 

“ _The Nutcracker_ ,” Aziraphale said, tracking Crowley’s gaze. “They all saw it at school two weeks ago and it’s been the game of the season.” 

It was chilly in the park, but not quite yet frosted over; some strange hint of autumn still lingered in the trees and the flowerbeds. The paths were wide and paved, winding around a pond, between old lampposts and around the bases of enormous, ancient trees. It looked a little morose, just now—the dying leaves, the wilting bushes, the bare branches—but Crowley could imagine how it would look in the spring, bursting with flowers and lush with greenery, fresh and new and verdant. 

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d walked through a park. He hadn’t realised how much he missed the earthy smell of it, the openness of it; he hadn’t realised how different the sunlight was when it wasn’t being reflected off steel and glass, filtered through the windows and harsh fluorescents of his office. He hadn’t been planning on doing it today, either, but he’d run into Aziraphale in the entryway of the Inn just after lunch and the conversation had started to linger, and when Aziraphale said, “You know, do you fancy a walk around the park?” Crowley had grinned and said, “Lead on, angel.” 

This time when they’d stopped at the cafe for their now-customary coffee and cocoa, Anathema hadn’t even pretended not to wink.

“They’re certainly a lively bunch,” Crowley said, watching the kids go. The particularly cherubic-looking boy was clearly the leader, directing the game this way and that; once the Mouse King, played enthusiastically by a rather grubby boy, was defeated, they all seemed content to pick up the sticks and start the battle over, and nevermind the Land of Sweets. Perhaps that part came later. 

“Bit of a group of trouble-makers,” Aziraphale agreed, sounding fond. He was wearing a scarf today, mostly cream with just a line of faintest blue running through it. It made his eyes look deeper, endless, like the whole of the cosmos was happening just out of sight. “But they’ve got heart, and that’s what counts, isn’t it?” 

Crowley couldn’t remember the last time he’d known anyone who had heart. Not really the done thing, in his line of work. 

The kids had made their way around the entire circuit of the pond, running in that tireless way kids had. “Excuse us Mr Aziraphale!” one of them shouted, “Excuse us Mr Aziraphale’s friend!” and then the whole group was slipping right between Crowley and Aziraphale, joyful and jostling, and Crowley couldn’t help but smile. 

“Careful now!” Aziraphale called after them. “Mind how you go!”

“I don’t think I was ever that young,” Crowley said, once the shouting had gone far enough away that they could hear one another again. “Already forty by the time I learned to walk, probably.” 

Aziraphale grinned. “You don’t remember much of it? Growing up?” 

“Nah, not really. Not a whole lot to remember, I don’t think. Mostly absent parents, not a lot of friends.” He pushed his sunglasses further up the bridge of his nose, an old nervous tic, and hated that he still did that sometimes. “Went to uni because--I dunno. Thought if I could just ask the right question, I’d unlock the secrets to everything. Change the world. Turns out the world’s too damn--” he gestured vaguely.

“Ineffable,” Aziraphale finished softly. 

“Yeah,” Crowley said. “Ineffable.” 

Aziraphale nodded. “Suppose I never even got so far as looking for the question,” he said, huffing a self-conscious laugh. “Things in Tadfield--they just _are_. Have been for years. Everyone’s so _certain_ of it.”

Crowley stopped on the path, looking over at him, remembering what Madame Tracy had said about bad things happening to good people. Aziraphale’s eyes looked unseeing over the still waters of the pond, bright and peaceful in the weak sunlight, before his face crumpled up into another one of those smiles, so unlike the _beaming_ he’d done the last time they’d gone out.

“Are _you?_ ” he asked.

There was a pause, and Crowley wondered if anyone had ever bothered to ask Aziraphale before, if he liked things the way they were. If he wanted something different out of what life in Tadfield could be. 

“Best not to speculate,” Aziraphale said firmly.

Crowley was just about to tell him what a load of crock that was when another voice cut in, smaller and far more excited. “Mr Aziraphale?” one of the Them asked, marching up to Crowley and Aziraphale again. The other three trailed behind, clearly interested in whatever mission this one had been sent on but not wanting to do it themselves. “Mr Aziraphale, can I ask you something? And your friend, if he knows.” 

“‘Course,” Crowley said instantly, holding out his hand for the kid to shake. Couldn’t have been more than eleven, and he already had the pinched look of a tax accountant around the eyes. The kid shook the proffered hand extremely seriously. “I’m Crowley.” 

“I’m Wensleydale, actually,” the kid returned. “What we want to know is, was _The Nutcracker_ was a book first, or a film? Because Pepper says she had a book of it when she just a little kid, but I actually had a film of it when I was just a little kid, which means they’re both as old as each other. And then Adam--” here the cherubic one in the back stood a little straighter-- “Said, here now, Mr Aziraphale knows all about books, and he’d know whether it was a book first, or something else. So which was it?” 

_Now_ Aziraphale’s smile turned, and there it was: the _beaming_. That golden, shining beaming. “Well,” he said, adjusting his scarf, and Crowley watched as he transformed into a storyteller, beckoning the other children closer, leaning in as if to impart to them some great secret of the world. “The very first time the story was told…”   
  
And Crowley watched as he laid out an overly-complicated history of _The Nutcracker_ , from Hoffman to Dumas to Tchaikovsky, unable and entirely unwilling to look away from the dancing hands, the expressive eyes. He looked ridiculous, truth be told, but he looked, in that instant, completely, uncomplicatedly happy. 

What a contradiction he was, Crowley thought. That he could say with one breath, _best not to_ , but then turn around and answer question upon question upon question. As if the only questions not worth asking were his.

When the kids were finally satisfied and took off again, now to play Drosselmeyer carving his magical toys out of the various sticks and stones of the Tadfield park, Aziraphale turned that beam onto Crowley. “Sorry about that,” he said lightly, clearly not really meaning it. 

“Not at all,” Crowley said, grinning back easily. “Who knew any one person could know so much about _The Nutcracker?_ Felt like I was in school again for a second there.” 

Aziraphale blushed. “Oh, it wasn’t too much, was it? I never know quite how much to tell Them when they ask, you know--”

“No,” Crowley cut off. “It was perfect, angel. Tell them everything. They deserve to know it. They deserve to be able to ask.”

The blush deepened, and the beaming softened, and Aziraphale looked at Crowley with those eyes, those endless eyes, and said, “They do, don’t they?” in a voice like maybe it meant something else entirely, something a little bit daring, and all of a sudden and for the first time in years, Crowley wondered what it might be like if Aziraphale could see him looking back.

“They really do,” Crowley said, but they both heard what he really meant: _So do you._


	6. Naughty & Nice

“And when should we expect to see the first draft of the offer?” 

Crowley squirmed as he paced up and down his tiny room at the Inn. White’s voice was always low and slick, especially when they smiled, and listening to it over the phone was like having motor oil poured down his ear. “I can draft up the offer over the weekend and have it to you on Monday,” Crowley said. “There are still a couple of loose ends I’ll have to wrap up before anything’s finalised—checking some of the records, making sure the deeds check out, getting the funds in escrow--but negotiations can begin next week as long as the seller is ready and willing to meet. I have an email in to their solicitor.”

White grinned. Crowley could tell, because something in the way they breathed down the line _oozed_ , making him cringe. “Good,” they said. “Our contractors are ready to break ground immediately after the new year. We’d like this deal to be certain.”

“Absolutely,” Crowley promised. “The offer is solid. We’re here because the seller was open to the deal to begin with, so it should just be a little matter of crossing some T’s and dotting some I’s, and you’ll have the deal in hand by Christmas.”

And he would be gone. Probably. 

The call eventually dripped its way to an end, and Crowley tossed the phone aside, exhausted and sore from being bent over his laptop all day. Already past six. If he’d been in London, he would’ve been home by now; he’d have slithered out of the office early, picked up some takeaway—Chinese? or maybe Thai—and melded himself to his sofa for a _Golden Girls_ marathon. Instead he’d spent the day in a rush, researching proposed clauses and shuffling digital papers and making useless calls. 

He eyed the telly in the corner of his room dubiously, and decided to risk Anathema at the cafe instead. 

Only Anathema wasn’t behind the counter when the cold evening breeze blew Crowley through the door. There was instead a tall-ish young man who looked rather startled at having been interrupted at the project he had laid out--taking apart a calculator, by the looks of it, and trying to put it back together--but who gamely straightened himself up and offered Crowley a seat and a menu and a promise to be right back.

The lights in the cafe had been turned quite low for the evening crowd, which suited Crowley just fine, and there was some quiet Christmas pop playing on a little radio in the corner. Two or three of the little tables had people at them, mostly teens who likely didn’t have anywhere else to secret themselves away and who were trying to look very grown-up by drinking black coffee and sharing plates of chips. 

Black coffee sounded terrible, Crowley thought, reading through the options. Fish and chips, shepherd’s pie, cheese toasty—well, he hadn’t exactly been expecting a run-down cafe to be reinventing the classics, did he? 

The lad did not come back though. Anathema did. 

“Oh, I thought I’d escaped you,” Crowley said, groaning extravagantly.

Anathema brightened like she couldn’t have been more pleased. “Newt told on you,” she said. “He looks sweet but you can’t trust him. Outright tattler, every time. Said that Aziraphale’s _friend_ was in here, without Aziraphale.” She didn’t actually wink at him again, but the way she said _friend_ made sure that Crowley knew it was implied. 

The lad—Newt, Crowley supposed—sidled back out of the kitchen, giving Crowley an extremely casual sort of look. “Oh, now I get it,” Crowley said. “It’s like good-cop, bad-cop, isn’t it? You lure me in with the nice one, and then bring out the big guns while I’m stuck waiting for a cheese toasty and a black coffee.” 

“One cheese toasty,” Anathema repeated, whipping out an order pad, “and a black coffee. Anything else?”

“No.”

“Not even…a hot cocoa?” 

“Not tonight, cafe girl.” 

Anathema raised an eyebrow. “You’re in a mood. Perhaps you’d be in a better one with a hot cocoa.” She looked at him a little harder. “Perhaps you’d be in a better one if _you called in a reason_ for a hot cocoa.”

“You’re awfully forward on his behalf, aren’t you?” Crowley said. He wanted to feel annoyed. He wanted to feel pushed, and irritated, and like he was going to take his cheese toasty to go if he had to walk out with the cafe’s plate in hand. Instead he felt--well, all of those things, but mostly like he probably _would_ be in a better mood if he called in a reason for a hot cocoa, and therefore a little caught out. 

She shrugged. “He deserves someone on his side, is all. Also you’re a bear to deal with without him; thought I’d make the night easier on us both.” 

Crowley looked at her carefully through his dark sunglasses; she looked back as though she could see right through them. “And you think I’m the sort of person he deserves to have on his side, do you?” 

“I think if you weren’t,” she answered, “you wouldn’t even have asked.” 

She didn’t know though, Crowley reminded himself as she flounced off, handing the torn-off slip from her order pad to Newt with a smile like she’d found the sun over there, dressed in a stretched-out olive t-shirt and dark-rimmed glasses. She didn’t know what he’d spent all day doing: negotiating the death of her cafe and its inevitable replacement with some chain that served unusual vegetable lasagnes and burgers called things like _the doomsburger_ or _the cowboy_. She didn’t know that by the time Crowley left town, there’d be nothing but destruction and mass-marketing left in his wake. 

He should’ve stayed in with the dubious telly after all. 

Newt brought the cheese toasty out to him, as well as a coffee black enough to feel like a punishment, but he didn’t say anything about Aziraphale, and Anathema didn’t come back. 

Anathema didn’t have to: the bell sounded over the door, and here was Aziraphale himself. 

His cheeks were flushed from the cold outside, his bow-tie a little askew. He made it halfway to the counter before he spotted Crowley, and his face lit up. “Oh, hello,” he said, with an awkward little wave. 

Annoyance, irritation, and gratitude all crowded to the front of Crowley’s mind, but he was smiling before he could stop himself. “Hey, angel,” he said, making Aziraphale’s cheeks pink a little more. “Nice night?”

“Bit chilly,” Aziraphale answered. “And you?”

“Improving, I think. Take a seat?”

Aziraphale hesitated. “You don’t mind? You do look like you’ve had a bit of a rough day, dear boy.” 

Crowley laughed, because of course Aziraphale would see it, and of course he wouldn’t go without saying anything. In less than a minute, he’d taken in the slump of Crowley’s shoulders and the lines in his forehead, and he’d known. Barely looking, but seeing everything: he’d known. “You know what, angel? I don’t think anything could help me more right now.” 

Aziraphale’s gaze lingered a moment, as if he wanted to reach out and touch, but then he slid into the seat across from Crowley.

“Is it the sort of rough day where you’d like to pick it to pieces,” he asked, “or the sort of day where you’d like to pretend it never happened?” and God, Crowley didn’t hate that, and he didn’t hate nosy, interfering Anathema, and he didn’t hate this stupid cafe with its stupid pop music and its stupid cheese toasty at all. 

“Pretend it never happened,” he sighed, thankful, and Aziraphale smiled. 

By the time Newt came back, still looking quite startled and eying Crowley like he might snap at any second, Aziraphale had already launched into a ramble about a book he’d been reading, which spanned everything from inaccurate representations of ancient Golgotha to criticisms of the job the publisher had done in the type-setting. He paused only to order a cocoa and an eggy in the basket—which hadn’t, Crowley noted—actually been on the menu, and then set about nit-picking generic three-act-structures with barely a breath. 

The sound of him rolled over Crowley, rolled through Crowley. The golden haze of the cafe lights and the tinny sound of Christmas songs faded into nothingness, and for a moment the whole world was reduced to a spotlight: a chipped blue formica table and the remnants of a cheese toasty, Aziraphale’s hands moving and brushing, sweeping Crowley along, making him feel a little lost at sea, a little adrift among the stars. 

Crowley didn’t mind. It was _easy_ , this—to sit and to listen, to laugh when the bubble in his chest got too big to hold, to lean in and argue back about Douglas Adams and the true meaning of 42. It was easy to forget. It was easy to only exist here, right now, across the table from a guardian angel who somehow knew just how to pull him out of himself. 

_Who pulls you out of the dark_ , Crowley wondered, watching Aziraphale’s laugh lines fold down the length of his cheeks as he wiggled, victorious and pleased with himself. _Who raises you up to the light?_

Aziraphale’s hand gestured wide and broad across the table, and Crowley reached out, unthinking, and caught it. 

The rush of words drifted off, treacle-slow, and stopped. 

He ought to let go. He really ought to let go. He hadn’t _meant_ to do it, after all, and it was strange, wasn’t it, and they’d really only bumped shoulders a few times, unless you counted the first time with Aziraphale’s hand around his arm, catching him, steadying him, and Aziraphale’s hand was as warm now as it had been then and suddenly Crowley realised he could remember it, viscerally, like the palm print of his hand was still there, still glowing against the pulse in Crowley’s wrist, and yeah, he ought to let go, because Aziraphale wasn’t saying anything and it was awkward and instead Crowley looked up and said, through a trembling mouth, “All right?” as if he’d never asked anyone if anything was all right before and he weren’t quite sure how to pronounce the words. 

Aziraphale looked at their hands, joined there on the table, and then he looked back up at Crowley and said softly, “Yes, I rather think it is all right.” 

And he didn’t take his hand away. He didn’t take his hand away when Newt came back with another coffee and cocoa, or when a cheese toasty and an eggy-in-the-basket turned into slices of a slightly-burnt apple tart; he didn’t take his hand away when he noticed Crowley grimacing over his black coffee, or when he dumped half his cocoa into that coffee with a fondly exasperated huff; he didn’t take his hand away when Crowley laughed and called him angel, and he didn’t take his hand away when he grinned and said, _yes, demon, that’s you_ , in the tone of voice that said he didn’t really think so at all. 

Finally, at nearly half-ten, Anathema came back round the table and told them she was kicking them out. “You can pick it up tomorrow,” she said, not looking at their hands wrapped together there on the table, and somehow that felt more telling and more intimate than if she had. 

So they made their excuses, and Aziraphale disappeared off into the night, going the opposite direction of the Inn next door; Crowley watched him as he passed the cafe’s windows, that bright pillar in the dark. 

“Thanks for calling him,” Crowley said into the silence of the cafe. 

Anathema moved out of the shadows behind the counter, a teal plaid coat already buttoned on, Newt close behind her. She looked at Crowley again like she could see beyond his dark lenses, and it was unsettling, a little. Even Beez hadn’t learnt that trick, in all the years they’d known each other. 

“I didn’t,” she said. “He comes in most nights, you know. Just a coincidence.” 

Crowley frowned, studying her; she had no tells at all. Newt behind her did, though, and his tells were all clear: admiration and love, confidence and faith. Newt believed her because Newt knew her, and there was no doubt in him. Crowley believed her too. 

“Why not?” he asked. “If you thought he deserved someone on his side?”

“Because you weren’t sure,” Anathema answered, as thought it were the most obvious thing in the world. “And I thought, even if just for tonight, you deserved someone too.”


	7. Snowmen

Crowley woke up the next morning with his sunglasses still on, digging uncomfortably into the ridge of his brow, and the sunlight streaming in brilliant and diamond white. Next to him, his laptop was nestled in the coverlet; he must have fallen asleep sometime late last night, somewhere in the middle of editing his proposal for Zuigiber, Sable & White. 

The paperwork Dagon had left behind had included some bare bones information about the leases currently tied to the properties that would be affected: which shops paid what rent, general terms of the leases, appraisal numbers from some six years ago, line graphs of fair market rates in similar properties in similar towns, complete with comparisons to rates after redevelopment. The numbers were not encouraging. 

He had, of course, written in a right of first refusal for the current lease-holders, but the rise in market rates post-development priced out ninety percent of lease-holders even in healthy economic communities. While Tadfield could expect a rise in economy, given the introduction of new housing being proposed in the upper floors and the draw from the surrounding area, the boom would be short-lived, and the likelihood that the current proprietors could survive the rise in rents even with the brief economical advantage was slim to none. 

What Crowley _really_ needed was an agreement to freeze rents for a twelve-month period, giving all the proprietors a chance to stabilise in the new development before the rent raise went into effect, but he could only propose it to his clients as part of the offer package. He couldn’t demand Zuigiber, Sable & White put it on the table, and he couldn’t sit on his hands and hold the deal hostage on behalf of parties that had no standing in the negotiations. He’d been up half the night trying to figure out how to phrase it, how to pitch it, how to make the seller align their weight behind it without compromising his ethical duty to his own client. 

Ethics schmethics. It was a damn shame that lawyers should be so constrained when nobody else bloody well was. 

Crowley finally heaved himself out of bed, straightening his sunglasses, and peeked outside at the morning sun. It had snowed last night, it looked like, and the world outside was fresh and new.

He hated snow. He hated the ice and the rivulets of dirty sludge that made the streets difficult to navigate. He hated the _cold_ of it, blistering against his fingers and cheeks; he hated the _wet_ of it, getting his socks damp and making his denims feel somehow moist even when they weren’t. He hated the way it seeped into his bones, burning in his lungs as he tried to breathe. He shivered at the thought of it already, and resolved to be in a shit mood all day. 

Only the shit mood wouldn’t hold, because last night— _last night_. 

Crowley was practically giddy as he got ready for the day, remembering Aziraphale’s golden laugh, that broad smile, the warmth of his hand, and he was feeling so particularly fond of Anathema of all people that coffee seemed in order once again, and he was pretty sure he’d be able to get her to make it half-coffee, half-cocoa if he asked nicely enough, the way Aziraphale had done last night when he’d realised Crowley was trying to drink it black. 

But Madame Tracy stopped him when he finally made his way downstairs, calling out, “Mr Crowley!” and beckoning him closer. She was laying out what appeared to be a tarot deck onto the polished bar. “Goodness, where is your scarf?”

“No need,” he waved her off, grinning. He doubted even the snow could dampen the furnace is his chest. “Just off for a coffee—did you want me to bring you anything?” 

“Oh, the cafe will be closed, love. First snow, you know.” 

Crowley pulled up short. “Closed?” 

Madame Tracy nodded. “First snow,” she repeated. “Lucky that it was a Saturday, really. Everyone’s gone down to the park. It’s tradition.” 

“Of course it is,” Crowley grimaced. Of course he’d end up in the sort of small town to think larking about in the snow was a good enough time to make a tradition of doing it. There’d probably be snowmen, horror of horrors, and he’d bet anything that even as he stood here now, that lot of kids—the Them, as Aziraphale had said it—were starting a veritable hoard of snowballs. But then: everyone, and if it were everyone—well. “But you’re not going out?”

“Got a reading with Mrs Ormerod in fifteen minutes, but I’ll be down after.” She waved him off with one of her tarot cards—the Ace of Cups, he thought it was. “And take a pair of gloves from the cupboard by the door, please, love.”

Crowley sighed, but did as he was told. There was, after all, no question about where he was going.

*

There were snowmen.

Of course there were. A veritable army of them, knee-high, had already been rolled out across the park by the time Crowley got there, even though the snow wasn’t all that thick and the grass tufted out of the white expanse here and there. The kids were going quite mad in it, flinging great handfuls at one another and screeching, flopping down on their backs and getting too much of it in their faces, and Crowley spotted Newt and Anathema with an enormous snowbank at the far end, which they seemed to be carving into a snow-castle. 

“Mr Crowley!” a young voice called, and Crowley looked up to see the four Them, clearly doing some plotting around the bushes that lined the paths of the pond. Wensleydale, the lad that had asked about _The Nutcracker_ , waved him over rather excitedly. “Mr Aziraphale promised he’d help us,” Wensleydale explained, “but he’s not here yet.”

“Oh, that rotten Mr Aziraphale!” Crowley said, laughing. “What’s he’s supposed to be helping you with?” 

“He won’t do the snowballs,” the girl said, in a bit of a complaint. “He helps Wensley draw the maps instead. For our battle.” 

One of the other boys, the particularly cherubic one, interceded quickly on Aziraphale’s behalf. “He says he’s a pacific, so it’s against the rules for him to do the fighting bits.”

“A pacifist,” Crowley corrected automatically, and added, “That’s me too then,” mostly because it would have been an unfair advantage to the Them against whoever they thought they were going to have a battle with. He briefly considered whether it were fair at all to have an adult help them, or whether that was particularly wise on his part, but decided that he could at least help keep the game safe and even from the thick of it and that he might as well. “What’s the rest of your names?” 

Adam, Pepper, Brian, and Wensleydale were quite satisfied with Mr Aziraphale’s replacement, even though he didn’t know the lay of the park very well—he didn’t even know about the secret hollow in the base of the Big Willow, the gall of him—and together they sketched out a little plan in a fresh bit of snow. The rival gang was made up of Greasy Johnson and his friends, apparently, and they were known to fight dirty but not so dirty that anybody got into any real trouble, because where was the fun in that. 

“And you’ve checked that your snowballs aren’t packed too tightly, is that right?” Crowley asked, double checking a few of the ones Pepper had dumped at his feet. “No rocks, no ice? That’s cheating, now.”

Adam drew himself up to a very dignified height. “There’s no cheating here,” he declared, very much the leader of the group, “as a matter of _honour_ ,” and the other kids all agreed. 

“All right then. Pepper and Brian, you’re going around this tree here to box Greasy Johnson’s gang in.” Crowley drew the route on their little snow-map with a long stick that Brian had presented to him very solemnly. “Adam and Wensley, you’re going on the offensive, _stay away from the pond_ , is that understood? Save your snowballs for the people who’re in the battle only, all right, no going off and getting anybody’s little sisters—” here he looked over to Pepper, who nodded grimly— “and we observe the code of honour like all knights of the realm: no civilians and nobody who’s surrendered.” He put his hand on his heart, swearing them to the oath, since kids liked oaths and knights and were more likely to follow good rules if an oath was involved. If only that worked so well on the grown-up versions. “Yes?”

The kids all swore “Yes!” and packed up an armful each of the snowballs before taking off along their assigned routes. Greasy Johnson’s gang was only a minute or two behind them—kids all about the same size, and they did fight a little dirtier, but nobody was getting hurt. Newt did get a snowball to the chest, but that was his own fault for walking into the field of battle to wave at Madame T, who wisely skirted it instead. 

“I see I’ve been replaced,” a voice said at Crowley’s elbow, about ten minutes into the battle, after all the snowballs had run out and the kids were just picking handfuls of snow off the ground to toss around. Aziraphale was there, grinning beautifully and wearing that cream scarf again, eying the stick in Crowley’s hand. “I believe that was supposed to be my sword. Did you knight them properly before they all went off to their honourable ends, dear boy?”

“Oaths on the heart, angel,” Crowley answered, feeling positively silly with smiling. He handed the stick over, and received in return a large tartan thermos which actually _matched Aziraphale’s bow-tie_ , and something inside Crowley’s chest stuttered in sheer, overwhelming affection. 

“Tea,” Aziraphale said, nodding at the thermos. “You look positively frigid.” 

He was, now that someone had mentioned it, his denims practically frozen to his thighs and his cheeks prickling with cold, and now that the sun was reaching midday the brilliance of the reflection on the snow was beginning to be too much. Crowley closed his eyes against it for a moment, and gratefully opened the thermos and took a sip. Just a good, strong builder’s tea: perfection, on a day like this. “Thanks,” he said, and they both turned to watch the group laughing and yelling on the make-shift battlefield. “You do this every year, then? They were expecting you.”

Aziraphale winked. “It’s me on this side, yeah,” he said. “And you see that boy there? With the longer dark hair?” Crowley nodded. “That’s the Dowling boy. His father, Ted, does the other side.” 

“Ah, I see,” Crowley laughed. “A conspiracy.”

“The kids all thing they’re getting a secret assist, and we get to monitor from start to finish. It used to be Adam’s dad, Arthur, but I was unanimously voted in the year before last when Arthur picked up the footie matches, and we all went to school together ourselves so it’s worked out fine. And it’s good for kids to have an adult other than a parent, really.” His eyes flicked up to Crowley’s briefly, and then focused again on the field. “Just in case.” 

Crowley couldn’t agree more. “They won’t mind me stepping in?” 

The chilled flush in Aziraphale’s cheeks darkened considerably. “It’s fine. They, erm.” He laughed nervously. “They know you’re with me.” 

Well, then. Crowley pinked too, and his cheeks ached with the cold under the force of his grin. “Oh,” he said. 

Aziraphale flushed a little further, bumped Crowley’s arm with his, and then cleared his throat. “Do you know,” he said, as if he’d just decided something, tapping the stick-serving-as-sword on the ground, “I think I ought to go say hello to Madame Tracy and everyone.”

“All right,” Crowley said, and they grinned at one another a second longer, but he couldn’t be arsed to feel embarrassed about it. He screwed the lid back onto the thermos and held it out. “Here, then.”

“Hang onto it,” Aziraphale told him, and then they couldn’t just stand there grinning like loons any longer, so he took off around the battlefield to where Newt and Anathema and Madame T were starting to carve turrets into the snowbank. Madame T and Aziraphale bussed each other easily on the cheeks; Anathema said something to him that made him swing back around and look at Crowley, smiling in some secret sort of way. 

Crowley turned back to the battlefield, trying to focus. It was getting harder in the bright midday light. He called out once for Brian to drop a stick he’d picked up, decreeing that this was a hand-to-snow combat and no swords were allowed, which Adam helpfully seconded. Now that Crowley knew there was another adult on the other end, it was easy to spot the guy—Ted, Aziraphale had said, and there he was: tall and broad and moustached and somehow vaguely American. 

It was a solid community like this, Crowley thought. It needed _support,_ not antagonism, and his mind whirred over the clauses of the deal proposal, wondering whether the negotiations—now set to begin properly on Monday, per the email from the seller’s counsel—would be more like the kids on the battlefield, clashing and warring, or more like the parents behind him, tapping their noses and working together for the desired outcome. 

He could get the developers to agree to the rent freeze. He could. He knew he could. And there’d be changes to this village, of course there would, but it would grow, it would strengthen, it would thrive. He could do that. 

Monday, Crowley decided. He’d give himself until Monday, until he had the rent freeze in place f _or certain_ , and then he’d tell Aziraphale. He’d tell Aziraphale everything. 

_He deserves someone on his side_ , Anathema had said, and fuck if she wasn’t right. Crowley had a feeling Anathema was always a little bit right, not that he would ever tell her that, and Aziraphale did deserve to know. Confidentiality schmonfidentiality. Even if it didn’t affect him directly, Aziraphale deserved to know.

When Aziraphale came back, he looped his arm boldly through Crowley’s and pressed their sides together. “How goes the battle?” he asked. 

“I think we’re winning,” Crowley said. “Pretty sure they think they’re winning too.” He looked over at Aziraphale and tried not to smirk. “Didn’t you have a sword with you?”

Aziraphale laughed, low and even. “I did have.”

“And what happened to it?”

“I gave it away.” 

Crowley looked at him properly; Aziraphale’s grin was threatening to break open Crowley’s chest. “You what?” 

“I gave it away.” He looked across the battlefield to Madame T, who now had the long stick in hand, holding it like one might hold a riding crop as she watched the game playing out between the kids, and then back at Crowley. “Thought I’d try Garrison’s for lunch today. Do you feel like warming up, or would you prefer to stay here and turn into a snowman yourself?”

“Angel,” Crowley said, sweeping the hand with the thermos wide in a lead-the-way sort of gesture, “I thought you’d never ask.” 


	8. Holiday Jumpers

There was a cruel trick that Crowley played on himself sometimes, and it went like this: he would hunch over his laptop to get some work done, insist to himself for hour after hour that he was almost through and he could last just a little bit longer, and then when he finally noticed once again that he possessed a physical body, he would find that his head was trying to explode from somewhere just above his left eyebrow in a fantastically shit if surprisingly stealthy migraine.

It was a trick he just so happened to be playing on himself right now. 

He really should have known better. Hours outside yesterday in the diamond-bright sunlight and the terrible chill, then lunch with Aziraphale in a steaming pub, then back out-of-doors where they stood freezing for another hour at the door of the Inn chatting, too little sleep, too long spent bent over his work, reading and re-reading the fine print of his proposal: it was a perfect recipe for one hell of a migraine, and his head had finally done the courtesy of delivering. 

At least the proposal was finished, he told himself, though it was a small comfort against the _sensationally_ bad timing. Not only was he not at home, where he had black-out curtains and a half-dozen superstitious rituals fine-tuned to deal with a migraine, and not only did he have a sodding deadline with a sodding meeting at eight o’clock tomorrow morning, but he also, and most importantly, had reservations for dinner with Aziraphale at the some incredibly poncy converted barn farm-to-table restaurant halfway to Oxford in two hours, which were the sort of plans they’d made standing too close together in front of the Inn and which, without a doubt, Meant Something. 

He thought he probably really very much wanted for something with Aziraphale to Mean Something. 

He needed to get up from the desk, he told himself sternly. He needed to get up, and find his pills in his laptop bag. He needed to get up and find his pills, get a glass of water, maybe a wet flannel, maybe some ice. He needed to order some black-out curtains from Amazon to be delivered to the Inn on rush ideally two days ago, and he needed to not bang his head into the wall again because it really wasn’t helping. 

Ice sounded nice. He could really go for some ice just now. If he could stand it by the time he’d navigated the stairs down to the pub and back, he could at least put his feet into a hot bath with the ice on his head and pray for the pills to kick in before he needed to meet Aziraphale. 

He did, eventually, manage to get up from the desk. He found the pills in his laptop bag, took one too many which he would no doubt regret later, slapped a cold, soaked flannel over half his forehead, leaving water droplets splattered across his lenses and running down his cheek, and stumbled out of his room with the knuckles of his hand digging hard into that spot above his eyebrow.

“Crowley?” Aziraphale said. “Good _Lord_ , are you all right?”

There he was, standing at the top of the stairs, holding a package done up in brown paper and white twine, and Crowley seriously considered for several long seconds whether he was likely to be a hallucination. Crowley’d never had full-blown hallucinations with his migraines before, but then, the migraines did take rather a sadistic interest in surprising him with something new and terrible every so often, and he really wouldn’t put it past them. 

Crowley hated the migraines. That went without saying. 

But Crowley also hated _other people_ and the migraines: the _poor-dears_ and the _why-don’t-yous_ and the _have-you-trieds_ , as if he hadn’t been handling them on his own since he was a child, as if he didn’t know his own limits, as if he couldn’t say what he needed and what he could take. Part of him knew that they meant well, the people who couldn’t resist making a comment, but that part of him also didn’t give a single fucking fuck, because it was bleeding obnoxious every single time. 

And he didn’t want to have to hate Aziraphale, not even a little, and especially not over this. 

“Hey, angel,” he managed, giving a weak smile as though he weren’t holding a sopping wet flannel to his face. “I’m not late, am I? Thought we weren’t meeting until six?”

Aziraphale had already reached out, his hands fluttering as though he wanted to peel away the flannel and look underneath, as though he wanted to brush Crowley’s hair back and cradle his face, but Crowley did not invite him and Aziraphale held himself back. “My dear, you look _terrible_ , what’s happened?” 

Crowley lifted the flannel away from his temple so that Aziraphale could see he was whole underneath, and not suffering from some sort of blunt force injury no matter what it felt like under his supraorbital ridge. “Just a bit of a migraine,” he admitted. “I’ll be fine, though. Not a big deal. I was just going down to get some ice.” 

“A migraine,” Aziraphale repeated, his brow creasing in concern. “I can—I mean, if it’s all right—I can run down for you, if you like. Just some ice in a bag? Anything to nibble?” 

“I can do it,” Crowley said, shaking his head. “Get them all the time, it’s fine. I can do it.” 

Something in Aziraphale’s face shifted, and he reached for Crowley’s free hand, taking it gently. “I’m not offering because I think you can’t,” he said, terribly quiet. “I’m offering so that you don’t have to. I know it’s new, this—” and he squeezed Crowley’s hand, stepping in a little closer, clearly indicating the _thing_ going on between them, the thing that might Mean Something— “but I’m here for you, whatever you need. Or even if you don’t need it, and only wanted it. I’m right here.” 

Oh, that was just unfair. 

It was unfair because it was perfect. It was unfair because it was easy. It was unfair because he didn’t hate it, and because he was supposed to hate it because he didn’t need it, and because no one had ever said anything like _even if you didn’t need, and only wanted_ before and he hadn’t known, before then, what it was like to want it. It was unfair because he had a sopping wet flannel stuck to his face and a miniature drill boring a hole in his skull and he did not look anything even remotely approaching cool, and because he had absolutely _nothing_ to say in return except to offer what smile he could make his face do around all the bubbling emotions in his chest and his stomach and the insides of his elbows and to croak out, “My guardian angel, huh?” 

Aziraphale smiled. “Suppose that’s my lot in life. Now come on—let me help you.” 

*

It was dark. It was quiet. 

Aziraphale had chivvied Crowley back into his room and helped him into the bathroom, listening to Crowley’s whispered directions as they went without question. He got Crowley situated sitting on the edge of the bath to put just his feet in, offered to refresh the wet flannel before he ran downstairs, and asked if Crowley had eaten anything all day, then left him to it. 

By the time Aziraphale had come back, tuna salad sandwich and bag of ice in hand, the tiny bathroom had filled with steam and Crowley had slumped against the wall, crushing his forehead hard into the cool tiles. Aziraphale had left the door open just a crack so that the steam could escape, passed the ice to Crowley, who promptly smashed it against his head with little grace, and produced a tea-light candle in a dark blue holder. “Madame Tracy says she needs this back for her seance next week,” he had whispered, lighting it somewhere behind Crowley, and then he’d arranged himself quite neatly on the floor, his back against the tub next to where Crowley was sitting, practically shoulder-to-hip. 

“You don’t have to stay,” Crowley had whispered, when he could stand to.

“I know,” Aziraphale had said, passing Crowley the sandwich, and that had been that. 

That had been an hour ago. The bath water had been turned off and the ice replaced with fresh, and when Crowley handed Aziraphale back his plate, Aziraphale had handed him a package instead—the brown-papered package that he’d been carrying when he’d met Crowley in the hall. “It’s nothing, really,” Aziraphale had whispered, “but it’s for you,” and the paper had crumpled easily under Crowley’s hands. 

Crowley could barely see it in the dark like this with his sunglasses still on, but he’d known immediately what it was: a jumper.

A thick, cable-knit jumper the colour of parchment, soft and enveloping to the touch, like he might lose his fingertips in the deep knit. Crowley’d held it up to the light, taking in the size of it: too big for him by several sizes. Crowley had looked over, suspecting that his mouth was hanging open but not really able to do anything about it. “Is this yours?”

“You don’t have to keep it,” Aziraphale had said quickly. “It’s just—yesterday you looked so cold, and it just—you would’ve been _wearing_ a jumper if you’d had one, so you must not’ve had one, and you’ll need one out here in the winter like this, so I thought—”

Crowley had slipped the jumper on over his shirt. It was too big and it was worn in with the smell of cedar and vanilla and it was warm and heavy and instantly comforting, like being held, even though Aziraphale was sat almost a foot away, and Crowley hadn’t said anything more than _thanks, angel_ , but Aziraphale had smiled at him like he’d known what that meant anyway: Something.

They had traded places after that, with Crowley stretched out on the floor as best he could, and Aziraphale had sat on the ledge of the tub, his back to the tiled wall, balancing precariously. Most of it had been passed in silence, but Aziraphale didn’t move, didn’t fidget, didn’t complain. He was, quite simply, quite comfortingly, there.

“I’m sorry about dinner,” Crowley said eventually, whispering still. He was laid out flat on his back, the ice dripping cold water into his hair from its spot on his forehead. 

“Don’t be,” Aziraphale answered quietly. Crowley risked the guttering light of the candle, and it was worth it to see him there, perfectly prim in his bow-tie and waistcoat, perched on Crowley’s tub and waiting out the pain with him. “Can’t say that this is more fun than dinner out might have been, but the company’s just as good.” 

Crowley snorted. “I’m shit company like this.”

“Yes,” Aziraphale agreed, the shadow of his face tilting into a smile. “But you’re _my_ shit company.”

They should have been sitting in some rustic hipster restaurant with a candle in the middle of the table, leaning close together like two conspirators over plates of aged short rib and braised duck they’d ordered off nearly incomprehensible menus, laughing and learning and tasting one another’s glasses of wine as their ankles knocked together under the table--not watching each other from a distance as they tried to make themselves comfortable on Crowley’s bathroom floor. 

At least they still had the candle. 

“This is the worst part, actually,” Crowley confessed, closing his eyes again and readjusting the ice. It felt close, somehow, here in the flickering light, and warm, and somehow intimate, and Crowley couldn’t remember the last time someone had seen him like this. “Not just the pain or the pressure or whatever, but that it’s just _so fucking boring_. Just laying alone in the dark for hours, waiting for it to be over. Drives you mad.” 

Aziraphale makes a sympathetic noise. “Have you always had them?” 

“Just about. As long as I can remember, anyway.” He swallowed heavily, then tapped the edge of his sunglasses. “It’s my eyes.” 

There was a weighty silence, the way there always was whenever Crowley brought up his eyes to someone who’d been politely avoiding the subject, made so obvious by the sunglasses that were intended to hide them. Aziraphale cleared his throat. “They’re light-sensitive?”

“They’re everything-sensitive,” he said, huffing a laugh, and his fingers shook a little with how easy it was to say out loud, and at least Aziraphale couldn’t ask to see, here in the dark like this, but his belly had turned into a pit anyway, writhing and hot. “I have pretty extreme coloboma. Structures in the eye that didn’t develop properly—I’ve got holes in my irises, basically. Two in each. Makes them look like damned snake eyes.” 

“Snake eyes,” Aziraphale repeated. He looked at Crowley, at the round lenses covering his eyes now, as if he were trying to imagine it. He sounded a little—well, surprised, maybe, but not outright disturbed. Maybe.

Crowley nodded. “You can ask. Anything. It’s all right.” 

Everyone always asked. _Does it hurt? Do you see weird? Do you have other snake features? D’you ever think about contacts to cover them? Can you fix them? Do your pupils still dilate? Don’t you ever, you know, scare people?_

Aziraphale didn’t ask any of those questions, though. Instead he looked at Crowley for a long, long moment, and then he asked a question nobody had ever asked before, not in a conversation like this. The most basic question and the one that everyone forgot—too busy imagining Crowley as the monster to remember that he was human. 

Aziraphale asked, “What colour are they?”

A slow, easy grin spread over Crowley’s face, and somewhere underneath the ice, deep inside his mind, deep inside his chest, he could have sworn he felt the pressure ease. 

“Amber,” he said, and in the fading candlelight, Aziraphale closed his own eyes, like he was envisioning it, like he was savouring it. “They’re amber.” 

“Amber,” Aziraphale repeated softly. “Sounds like they suit you.”

Crowley liked that.


	9. Holiday Parties

“This’ll be a regular old party,” Crowley muttered sarcastically, watching the sleek black car pulling up the drive toward Tadfield Manor. “A shindig. A gala. A big, fancy _soiree_.” 

It really wouldn’t.

This would be something like a war.

It always struck Crowley as strange that for two parties who ostensibly had the same goal —to transfer ownership of property in exchange for funds —real estate negotiations were so often bitter, barbarous, and, on occasion, bloody. Say the words _escrow funds,_ and you had better bring out the suits of armor. Ask somebody for a current professional inspection and appraisal, and you might as well schedule ye olde jousting tournament right now to defend it. 

Crowley could play by those rules, and he didn’t have to _like_ them to use them. Crowley was the bloody Black Knight of those rules: menacing, treacherous, dangerous. 

The trick, Crowley had learned, was that he _looked_ like it. The dark sunglasses, the inappropriately casual clothes, the well-practiced and perfectly maintained sneer. Beez would have had guts for garters out of anybody else who showed up to the firm in denims, but Crowley’s were part of the _look_ , and the _look_ worked. The _look_ made people think Crowley were going to sling himself into a chair and demand an unreasonably low price point, which he was. The _look_ made people think he was going to laugh at their requests for extensions on vacating the property, which he was. The _look_ got everyone’s hackles up and made them aggressive, and that made them sloppy, and that was where Crowley got in, sliding in between the bluster and the affront to sneak in a comma instead of a period, a _may_ instead of a _shall_ , an _or_ instead of an _and,_ twisting obligations to dust and promises to ruin while the other guy preened over getting Crowley to agree to the fair market value.

Besides, as Beez always said, the sunglasses worn with a _suit_ made him look like sodding _American Psycho,_ and that was just not on. 

The car rolled to a stop in front of the Manor’s front entrance —a Tesla, all flash and no substance. Crowley wrinkled his nose at it. Too obvious by far, and with none of the history of the Bentley. The Bentley wasn’t the kind of luxury that could be bought down at any old dealership; the Bentley took work. She took respect. She took care. 

A Tesla was just cash on wheels, all stupid door handles and touchscreens and _autopilot_ , and that’s what these solicitors would be too. Empty, with no one there to drive. 

“Hastur,” Crowley said, spreading his hands in welcome as two gentlemen got out of the car. He put on his slickest, sharpest smile. “Ligur. Welcome.” 

The two men did not return his smile. “Crowley,” said the first. The second added something under his breath which might have been _bastard_. 

Crowley clapped his hands together. “Well! Let’s get the party started, then, shall we?” 

*

“No,” Ligur was saying, two hours in. “No, no, no.”

“No,” Crowley said back. “You can’t just say _no_ to everything, that’s not how it works. And frankly, it’s suspicious as hell. Ligur, this is standard, we’re not asking for anything out of the ordinary here. If the records checks come back a mess, it won’t be my client’s responsibility to tidy them up.” 

“It will be if they want this property!”

“Then we’ll walk away, and you’ll be stuck with a property you can’t sell because the records are a mess.” Crowley rolled his eyes. “How did you really expect that to work?”

Ligur shrugged. “A block off the high street in a town half an hour out of Oxford? It’ll sell eventually. We can be patient.” 

“Hasn’t sold yet,” Crowley said, pulling some papers toward him, flipping through pages. “In the meantime, your clients are hemorrhaging money. All the properties are in need of repairs at the very least, and while you’ve got good tenants, they can’t compete. Now, we’re willing to protect those tenants as part of the deal so you’re not leaving anybody out in the cold, and this’ll be a golden opportunity for them with the rights of first refusal—”

Hastur snorted, and pulled his lip back in something that was probably intended to be a grin. “Our clients aren’t asking for tenant’s rights of first refusal.”

Crowley raised an eyebrow, gritting his teeth. “We’re offering. No strings attached.” 

“We don’t care.” Ligur tilted his head, squinting at Crowley. His gaze was fiery in the low light of Tadfield Manor, where the wood paneling and poor lighting made everything look dark all the time. “The leases are all up at the end of the month anyway. Our clients’ intentions aren’t to make repairs or protect tenants. Our clients’ intentions are to _sell_.” 

_Ugh_ , that was cold. “Well, they sound lovely,” Crowley shot back, refusing to think about the chill that ran down his spine, as if he was standing on top of a very, very high wall with one leg hanging over the edge. He couldn’t spare the thought, not right now, not in the middle of this. “My clients’ intentions are to buy. So why are you making this difficult on us?” 

It was a moot question, obviously, and Crowley already knew the answer: money, mostly, and apparently just a little bit because they could. Ruthless to the point of recklessness, careless to the point of irresponsible. He wondered if their clients knew how tight-fisted Hastur and Ligur were being with their terms, and what they might _actually_ be authorised to do, were they not such giant arseholes. Their firm, Duke & Duke, did have some great solicitors, but in Crowley’s opinion, Hastur and Ligur were not among them.   
  
They had been at this for three hours, and they’d made their way through no more than a handful of Crowley’s proposed terms. They hadn’t even _touched_ price point. 

“Other developers would give their right arm to have a chance at this property,” Hastur said. 

“Other developers aren’t sitting at the table,” Crowley answered, “and now you’ve just said that the leases are up at the end of the month. If you think you’re hemorrhaging now, imagine how it’ll be when the rents aren’t coming in. Empty properties, empty accounts. You’ve got us at the table. Do your own bloody homework on your own bloody property and come back when the records are clean.” 

There was a long, tense pause, and Ligur said, “We’ll have to consult with our clients,” and only then could Crowley breathe again. They cleaned up their notes, set another date for another meeting, and Crowley showed them to the door, emphatically not shaking their hands. 

“You did not finish negotiations,” a voice said behind Crowley as he stood in the open doorway, watching the shiny Tesla make its way back down the drive. There were a few flurries starting in the grey midday light. _Are we just the kids,_ he asked himself, _fighting a battle that neither side intends to lose? Or are we the adults, coordinating both of our sides to a win?_

“No,” Crowley agreed. “But it’s not over. There are a few battles left.” 

A second voice was heard, from somewhere on the left. “Perhaps we should starve them of a few concessions next time.” 

“Hard to move toward a middle if we keep taking steps back.” 

The third voice, from the right. Crowley wondered if they practiced that. “Forget meeting. Drag them to us if they will not come.” 

Crowley closed his eyes, and thought about Ligur’s almost curious sneer, Hastur’s dead-eyed stare. He thought about Newt and Anathema in their cafe, humming Christmas carols to each other as they churned out hot cocoas and cheese toasties. He thought about Madame Tracy, throwing lines of fairy lights up over the curtain rods, bribing him with buttery biscuits to get him to help out. He thought about the Them, and Greasy Johnson’s gang; he thought about the old men at the cafe counter and the old ladies fluttering about outside the post office. 

He thought about Tadfield, and what it would mean to this place if no one cared about it. What it would mean to these people if no one would protect them. 

He thought about Aziraphale, and the jumper hanging over the back of the chair in Crowley’s room, and what it would mean to _him_. 

“I have to go,” Crowley said, jogging down the front steps of the Manor, reaching for his keys. He pulled the Bentley toward the drive, past Zuigiber, Sable, and White standing like spectres just inside the door, and he did not look back. 


	10. Carols

Tadfield was dark by the time Crowley got back. He parked the Bentley in front of the cafe and shut it off, then sat for a long moment, looking up at the dark windows, the bedraggled greenery and the faded red ribbons, the faint gleam of fairy lights. The high street was silent and still but for the crackle of the loudspeakers piping music into the night air, and for a moment Crowley was lost to time: adrift somewhere between the night he’d first arrived, bitter and annoyed, and some night had not yet happened, full of warmth and possibility and the ethereal image of white-blond curls and a star-beam of a smile, waiting for him on the pavement. 

He’d spent all afternoon thinking about it, that maybe-someday night. And all the other nights he’d spent, _before_ , nights and nights and nights, when he’d been alone in his flat with nothing but his plants, when he’d been alone in his office with nothing but his paperwork. Nights when London, pressed so close around him, had seemed so far away. 

And all the other nights he will have to spend someday, _after_ , nights and nights and nights. Whether he’d spend them the way he’d grown so used to spending them, or whether, just maybe, there was a chance for something different.

He’d driven up past Oxford, after the meeting at Tadfield Manor. There was a little town about twenty minutes north that had been, demographically, not so different from Tadfield once: a quiet market town with a handful of commuters in its long-since settled population, with its long-since settled familiarity and steadiness. Then two years ago, Zuigiber, Sable & White had set-up shop, courted the local council with promises of economic revitalisation, and eviscerated the place from the inside out. 

Oh, Crowley’d been able to see the _success_ in it, from some perspectives at least. There’d been a population boom, of course, and in had gone a Nando’s and a Sainsbury’s, and more had followed. The economy did see a boost, just enough to raise property values and therefore rents, and then with population came competition. Gone was the local coffee shop and in went the Costa. Gone was the local boutique and in went the Top Shop. Parking became a nightmare; the streets became a hazard to pedestrians and bikers. Crowley had driven through the little town, and there were people, people, people, doing and shopping and laughing, and none of them looked happy. The shops had carefully curated shiny new display windows; the park was empty. 

This was the future of Tadfield, Crowley had thought. It would look just like this, if he followed the deal through the way he ought: busy and anxious and churning on its edges, utterly without heart. 

Tadfield needed heart. Tadfield _deserved_ heart: its kids playing in the snow under the conspiratorial eye of their guardians, its cafes full of teenagers who reveled in the safe haven, its pubs that passed out buttery biscuits and cups of tea. Its steady hands and warm blue eyes and echoing whispers in the dark. _Whatever you need,_ it had said. _Or even if you don’t need, and only want. I’m here for you._

For a long time, Crowley had hated wanting. He had wanted before and only learnt how to be disappointed.

But as he got out of the car and made his way back toward the Tadfield Inn and Pub, with a perfect image in his head of nights that would come _after_ , after this night and after the next night, of everything those nights could be, with his heart racing and his palms sweating and mouth trying hard not to bend into a mirror of that star-beam of a smile, Crowley thought that maybe, just maybe, it would be worth it to want just one more time. 

*

Crowley walked into the pub, and then walked back out.

He looked up at the sign to make sure it was the right place. _Tadfield Inn and Pub_ , the sign still said, and he opened the door again, a little more trepidatious this time. Music and heat and noise poured out at him; the place was packed wall-to-wall with what must have been half the village at least. 

As Crowley slid inside, angling himself between this person and that, the music and noise resolved into something that could very optimistically be described as a song. There was a sort of makeshift spotlight illuminating one wall, leaving the rest of the pub in semi-darkness lit only by the fairy lights Crowley had helped Madame T hang around, and in the centre of the spotlight, four familiar kids were doing their very best—and therefore most obnoxious—rendition of _The Twelve Days of Christmas._ The Them were only on eight maids a-milking, and Crowley had the distinct impression that most adults had had enough of the song somewhere around four calling birds.

“Oh, Mr Crowley!” Madame Tracy shouted, when he finally made his way over the bar. “So glad you could make it, love. What can I do you to drink?” 

Crowley shook his head. “I’m just looking for Aziraphale, Madame T. Do you know where I can find him?” 

Madame Tracy tilted her head in thought, already pouring another beer for another patron. “Think I saw him last with Newt and Anathema,” she said distractedly.

“Wait, he’s _here_?” Crowley looked round, but couldn’t see a bloody thing around all the people. Madame Tracy nodded along. 

“But I know he was going to say hello to Arthur and Deidre—oh, there’s Newt, there!”

Newt had the very good fortune of being just a little bit taller than the village average, and also the slightly bad fortune of always looking a little bit confused, which made him quite easy to pick out in a crowd. He saw Madame Tracy waving and Crowley looking, and put his hand up to wave back in that way people do when they’re not really sure if you’re looking at them or at someone else. As the sea of people shifted and parted, Crowley could see Anathema next to him. She had a reindeer antler headband on, which clearly did not suit her more than they suited anybody else, but she looked quite pleased with it.

Crowley made his way over to them, picking his way around this thrown elbow or that sneaking child. “Have you two seen Aziraphale?” he asked over the noise. On the little makeshift stage, the Them had made it nearly all the way down again from eleven pipers piping. “Madame T said he was here.” 

Anathema nodded, leaning in close to be heard over the noise. “He went upstairs,” she half-yelled into his ear. “But he should be down again in a second. He promised to be here when Newt and I sang and we’re up next.”

“What the Heaven was he upstairs for?” Crowley asked. 

“Looking for you, obviously,” she said, and then her gaze shifted to somewhere behind him. “Look now.” 

Crowley looked. 

The door to the stairs had opened into the darkened pub, and Aziraphale stood on the bottom step, looking over the room to as if searching for something. The upstairs light streamed out from behind him, illuminating him in brilliant silhouette, making him look like he was stepping down from Heaven itself, like he were coming to bring the news, _be not afraid_. It was like looking at holiness as it chose humanity, and when Aziraphale’s eyes found Crowley’s from across the room and when Aziraphale’s mouth curved into that smile, that beaming smile, Crowley felt the breath go right out of him. 

Something underneath his skin settled as Aziraphale stepped forward. The crowd almost seemed to part between them, and the very last partridge was home to roost in the very last pear tree, and Crowley was not afraid. 

When Aziraphale reached him, he reached automatically for Crowley’s hand, stepping in close to say against his ear, “You look like you’re feeling better, my dear.”

Crowley squeezed Aziraphale’s hand, drawing him closer, and returned, “You look like an angel,” so unexpectedly earnestly that they both flushed in the low pink and orange lights of the pub. 

“All right, you two,” Anathema butt in, grinning in a way that was probably intended to come across as exasperated but instead only looked overwhelmingly indulgent. “We’re up, so pay attention please!” 

The Them had dispersed back into the crowd, their twelve days blissfully over. Anathema led Newt onto the little stage in their place, and a rather haggard-looking bloke who seemed to be more greatcoat than man took Anathema’s music request, finding a CD and putting it into a player. The first beats of _Baby It’s Cold Outside_ started; Anathema had, predictably, a clear and easy voice, but Newt was a surprisingly strong companion. They sang as if they sang together all the time, and Crowley supposed they probably did, over at the cafe; they played with the song as if they could read each other’s minds, and Crowley supposed they probably did that too, for how much time they seemed to spend together. 

Aziraphale had taken Newt’s spot leaning against the wall, and Crowley leaned next to him. “What is this?” he asked. “It’s like half the town’s turned out for karaoke night.” 

“Carol Karaoke,” Aziraphale answered, surveying the crowd with a frown. “Rather more than half, don’t you think?”

Crowley laughed. “You’d know better than me, angel. Another Christmas tradition?”

That seemed to placate him, and he tilted into Crowley’s shoulder a little, propping them up together. “One of my very favourites,” Aziraphale said. “Oh, sure, it’s all very cliche, and the karaoke’s outdated— _don’t_ laugh,” he scolded, when Crowley snorted, but he was giggling too, “of course I know it’s outdated—but this one’s never been a big tourist draw. Just us, here. Started one year when it was too cold to even bear thinking about going out for it, and Madame T’s kept it up all these years.”   
  
“S’nice tradition, angel,” Crowley agreed. 

Aziraphale looked out over the crowd with such affection that Crowley’s own heart strained in the cage of Crowley’s chest. “Music brings people together,” Aziraphale said. “Always has done. And here we are, you know? Tadfield, come together.” 

They watched Newt and Anathema finish out _Baby It’s Cold Outside_ , after which they came victorious with a celebratory round of mulled wine; they saw the vaguely American Ted Dowling sing a shockingly heartfelt _What Child is This_ ; they laughed as Madame T came on with _Santa Baby_ to whoops and hollers; two women that Aziraphale identified as Deirdre Young and Harriet Dowling did a very drunk version of _I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus_ , after which they and most of the kids were carted off home; a kind-faced gentleman Aziraphale called Jaime Hernez did _O Christmas Tree_ , just exactly the way Tony Bennett had done; a man in a delivery uniform sang _I’ll Be Home For Christmas_ to thunderous applause; a short, perpetually angry-looking fellow that Aziraphale named, in the most pompous mockery of a voice, as “R.P. Tyler, Chairman of the Resident’s Association,” sang _The Christmas Song_ , and poorly; and all the while they laughed and teased, and Newt eventually commandeered a tray of nibbles from somewhere, and Crowley was introduced to more people than he’d never be able to keep track of, and Aziraphale kept hold of his hand the entire time, and if he ever thought twice about it, introducing a newcomer in dark sunglasses to every last living person he knew with their hands entwined, he never hesitated so much as a second. 

After R.P. Tyler, Chairman of the Resident’s Association, had done, a woman’s choir took the stage. “St Beryl’s,” Aziraphale murmured. “Almost done, then.” They performed a capella, clearly a final act to the evening: _Do You Hear What I Hear_ and _O Come, O Come Emmanuel_ and a hauntingly beautiful back-up with a woman Aziraphale called Mary Hodges singing the solo on _The First Noel_. Lastly, in the resounding quiet of the pub, they sang _Silent Night_ in rounds, building and building and building, that made Aziraphale’s smile go a little shaky, and made Crowley draw a little closer to him. 

“You all right?” Crowley asked, as the choir shuffled off. 

“I’m fine,” Aziraphale reassured him. “Lots of memories in this room tonight.” He squeezed Crowley’s hand and smiled, small but loaded with a feeling Crowley recognised from within his own chest. “And now I’ve got a memory of you here, too, so. Not half bad, eh?” 

The pink and orange lights softened all his edges, softening his waistcoat and his bow-tie, softening his gaze and his hand in Crowley’s hand, and Crowley leaned in, watching the way Aziraphale’s eyes followed his, the way they followed the curve of his mouth, and Crowley _wanted_ , and—

And he pulled back.

“I have something to tell you,” he said, before he could stop himself.

Aziraphale blinked, and he drew back as well. “Of course,” he said. “There’s just—” He gestured toward the little stage, which had gone clear, and Crowley realised all of a sudden that the pub was still terribly quiet, as if holding its breath. Aziraphale smiled nervously up at him. “My turn.”

He was gone before Crowley could say another word, stepping out of the crowd, taking the spot on the stage. The spotlight faded away, leaving him an almost ghostly figure in the warm glow of the fairy lights. 

Crowley looked at Anathema, questioning, and she leaned in to whisper in the stillness as the crowd waited for Aziraphale to begin. “He sings the last song every year,” she told him. “Since he was a little kid, I guess.”

“Why?” Crowley asked. “People don’t compete for that sort of thing? The great finale?”

Anathema shook her head. “Just listen.”

Into the silence came the first soft notes of a piano, and then Aziraphale took a breath, and began to sing. 

It was _O Holy Night_. Crowley knew it was _O Holy Night_. Crowley had heard O Holy Night a thousand times, from belters like Mariah Carey and Celine Dion, from Andrea Bocelli and Luciano Pavarotti, from trumped-up one-hit wonders and top-forty arseholes who had never sang a note without auto-tune behind it. He’d heard it sung by choirs, and by soloists, and by people who believed in God and by people who couldn’t quite believe in God but who could in the power of a single child to change the world and by people who believed in nothing but their own power on the stage, and none of them had ever sounded like this. 

Crowley held his breath, and fell in love. 

It’s a funny thing, the moment of falling in love. It’s the sort of thing that can only be seen in retrospect, and thus the _moment_ of it is never the moment of _falling_ but rather the moment of _realising_ , of _knowing_ something that had already happened, the night before or the day before or the week before. Of looking through the dark to the warm glow of a guardian angel in a cream and gold bow-tie, who had held him by the wrist to protect him from burning and who had held ice to his head to protect him from imploding and who had given him a jumper from his own closet to protect him from freezing, who laughed so easily and still held something back and who had such hope in the world, such love in the world. Of recognising that bright, beaming smile, and the spark of it in Crowley’s chest for what it truly was: a recognition. 

A welcome home, into the _after_.

When the last threads of Aziraphale’s voice finally faded and the piano notes drifted away and the silence settled back over the room, Aziraphale finally met Crowley’s eyes, and in that brief, endless silence, Crowley knew that he was not alone. 

Then the pub erupted, cheers and applause, the thunderous calls of _Merry Christmas_ and _Happy New Year_ and _Peace on Earth Goodwill towards Men_ and the congratulations and the last calls for a drink breaking through the room like the sea upon the shore. Anathema pushed at Crowley’s shoulder, shouting through the madness, “Go find him, you numpty!” And Crowley stumbled through the crowd, searching, half-blind with shock and the low lighting, calling and calling, “Aziraphale! Aziraphale, where the Heaven are you!” and people were patting his back as though _he’d_ done something, pushing him one way and then the other like a feather in the wind, and then—

A hand found his, and then Aziraphale pulled him out of the storm. 

“Let’s get out of here,” he said, and Crowley nodded, and followed.


	11. Mistletoe

The cool night air was a relief after the heat and the press of the pub, and Crowley and Aziraphale spilled out into it, hands clasped and cheeks warm. They’d skipped out on goodbyes in favour of sneaking away, giggling with the conspiracy of it, with the _secret_ of it, like two teenagers discovering that first carnation-pink thrill of something young and fresh and new. Crowley’s heart was going mad in his chest with it, and he didn’t hate it, he didn’t hate it at all.

He was in love.

He and Aziraphale looked at one another, grinning like idiots in the shock of the chilly air, but then the door of the pub opened again and a whole mess of people came pouring out, laughing and jostling and shouting their last goodbyes. Aziraphale laughed too, and tugged Crowley further up the pavement. “Everyone will be on their way out now,” he said. “Best to get out of the way.”

“Fascinating crowd,” Crowley said. “You lot do this every year?” 

“Oh, for years,” Aziraphale told him. “Madame Tracy started it when she first came to Tadfield, as an alternative to traditional caroling. What better way to do it than inside in a nice warm pub, rather than traipsing around the village in the cold?”

“And what’s more British than caroling at Christmas,” Crowley agreed. “And you—have you always—” he waved a hand vaguely to indicate a microphone— “Done that? You didn’t tell me you could sing.” 

Aziraphale flushed in the warm light of the street lamps. “Well, it doesn’t come up, does it? _Oh, and by the way, I sing Christmas carols quite well._ Bit silly, really.” 

“Quite well,” Crowley scoffed. “You’re an _angel_ , angel.”

Aziraphale laughed. “Yes, well, you _would_ say that.” 

“Anyone would say that. Anyone _does_ say that—that’s what the whole grand finale thing says, actually, or did you miss that?”

“All right, fine,” Aziraphale conceded, put-upon but he was smiling too, flushed pink and pleased, and Crowley was in love. “Come on, what do you say—it’s a bit chilly, but I don’t suppose you’d mind going for a walk? 

Crowley wouldn’t have minded anything Aziraphale might have suggested just then, from a walk in the park to the end of the bloody world. He swept an arm out in front of them. “Lead the way.”

The noise from the pub faded behind them as they made their way up the high street, the last echoes of laughter dissipating into the hush of the night, and Tadfield was a world blanketed in snow and muffled in serenity. They whispered to one another as they passed the dark shop windows and the little clock tower, the old war memorial and the ancient church perched high up on the hill, agreeing without words to preserve that stillness, that calm. Even the crackling loudspeakers that typically piped music into the streets had fallen silent, and aside from the occasional snowflake drifting by, everything was quiet. 

Aziraphale’s hand was warm in Crowley’s, and Crowley was in love. 

They left behind the golden lamplight of the high street and made their way into the indigo dark of the park, lit only by the light of the moon reflecting on the water, the expanse of snow. Crowley pressed a little closer to Aziraphale as they made their way, conscious that it would be harder for him to navigate the paths in the dark from behind his sunglasses, and Aziraphale only pressed closer in return, slowing his pace a little. They went around the pond, past the barren flowerbeds and around the Big Willow, trading whispers like secrets, low laughter like a cipher they both understood.

At the far end of the pond, a footbridge crossed over the narrow span of the water, and when they reached the middle of it Aziraphale finally slowed to a stop, looking out over the water, over the snowy paths, sparkling in blue-hinted white and blanketed in silence. Beyond the walls of the park, the town was silhouetted in its orange lamplight glow, inviting and alive, but right here, right now, it was just Aziraphale, and Crowley, and the moonlight. 

“I’ve always loved this park at night,” he said softly, leaning on the railing of the bridge, pressing his shoulder to Crowley’s. “The peacefulness of it. Coming here alone has always felt like—important, somehow. Almost sacred, like returning to something. Some vestigial urge to return home to Eden, maybe.” He huffed, as if to laugh at himself. “It’s a bit fanciful, I know—”

“I don’t think it is,” Crowley cut off, because nothing was fanciful right now, pressed close together in the dark as they were. “Some places are like that, I think. Almost like making a pilgrimage to something, isn’t it? Like remembering something you never knew but loved anyway.” 

Aziraphale’s face was half-hidden in the shadows, but Crowley could just make out the curl of a smile along the edge of his mouth. “Yes,” he said. “That’s exactly it.” 

Crowley knew it was, because that was how the whole of Tadfield felt to him: stuffed to the brim with love, with flashes of love, as if the whole place had been blessed. As if he’d always woken up in the dappled light of lace curtains; as if he’d always popped into a cafe for a coffee from someone who would wink and tease; as if he’d always spent his mornings organising snow battles and his evenings singing along to bad karaoke down the local. 

As if he’d always been here, or maybe as if he was always on his way here, as if he’d been looking for this all his life, and now he’d finally _found_ it. 

He’d found it in Tadfield because he’d found Aziraphale, and Crowley was in love. He could _feel_ it, a living thing inside him, twisting through his ribcage and holding him tightly, growing and moving all throughout him like blood in his veins. He could feel it taking root somewhere deep in his soul: the first seedling of a long and endless summer, the first raindrops of a fierce and everlasting storm, and Aziraphale was there in it too, hand-in-hand with him, shielding him from the terror of it, and Crowley _knew_ him, every inch of him, from the waistcoat to the bow-tie to the broguing on his shoes, from the laugh that lived inside his chest and the tenderness that lived inside his eyes, the dramatic gasp over bad opinions about Shakespeare and the pleased sigh over homemade apple tarts, from everything Crowley didn’t yet know and everything he didn’t yet understand to everything Aziraphale hadn’t yet told him and everything Aziraphale had maybe never told anybody, from everything he protected of himself to everything Crowley wanted to protect _with_ him, _for_ him, and Crowley was in love. 

He hadn’t even known that he’d been looking for something, but he’d found it. It was love.

“It's been a long time since I've been happy,” Aziraphale said quietly, closing his eyes and tilting his face toward the moon, sighing up into the dark. “Too long, I think. Just simply, uncomplicatedly happy.”

Crowley watched his profile for a long moment in the dark, the line of his nose, the sweep of his jaw, then nudged him a little, shoulder-to-shoulder. “And are you now? Happy, I mean.” 

“Yes,” Aziraphale breathed, and Crowley could hear the certainty in it, Crowley could _recognise_ the certainty in it; it was the same certainty unfurling in his own chest, reaching through his own hands. “Are you?”

“Here, right now, with you?” Crowley had never been more certain of anything in his life. “Yeah. I am.”

Aziraphale opened his eyes again, looking over at Crowley, studying him. “You know,” he said, shifting a little bit closer, his eyes heavy-lidded and soft in the blue of the dark. “It’s too bad, really.” 

Crowley shifted closer too. “What’s too bad?”

“It’s a beautiful night,” Aziraphale said, his eyes flicking up before settling back onto Crowley’s. He was so close now that Crowley could make out the laugh lines at the corners of his eyes, at the corners of his mouth. He had a freckle Crowley had never noticed before, just under his left eye. “Wide open skies. Nothing at all between here and the stars.” 

That was probably true, Crowley supposed. He didn’t know for sure; he was too busy watching the sly smile curve into the edges of Aziraphale’s mouth, the mischievous light coming into Aziraphale’s eyes. “Yeah?” 

“So,” Aziraphale went on, as matter-of-factly as he could manage, which wasn’t very, “there’s absolutely no chance _whatsoever_ of accidentally wandering under some mistletoe with you out here, is there? It’s a tragedy.” 

There was a beat, and then a laugh startled out of Crowley, buoyed to the surface by the fluttering in his stomach, the swell in his chest. Aziraphale’s grin had gone decidedly smug. “Oh,” Crowley said. “Oh, _really?_ ”

“Really. _Such_ a tragedy.” 

Crowley would have liked to have said something clever, something smooth and slick and flirtatious, but Aziraphale looked up at him with those eyes, so close Crowley could count his eyelashes, limned in moonlight, and he was helpless. “You’re ridiculous,” he said instead, “did you know?”

“A bit,” Aziraphale confessed easily, and it was _insane_ that there was still space between them, that six thousand years had passed on this bridge and they were still moving toward one another, Crowley couldn’t account for it, “I know I’m ridiculous, sometimes. But I also know—”

He hesitated, just for a second but a second was long enough, and Crowley could _see_ it in the shine of Aziraphale’s eyes, the mirror image of that wanting, reaching thing that lived inside Crowley’s own chest, and he could _feel_ it, in the smile that spread over Aziraphale’s mouth, and Crowley felt his own mouth do the same, following the lines of Aziraphale’s, Crowley would follow Aziraphale anywhere—and Azirpahale must have seen it and felt it and wanted it too because his chest hitched and it was _love_ , known and seen and felt and wanted and returned, it was love—and Aziraphale said, all in a rush, he said— “I know you’re going to kiss me anyway.” 

And then Crowley _was_ : kissing Aziraphale, and being kissed by Aziraphale.

And _oh_ , it was love, in the way no one else had ever loved, probably, in the way no one else had ever been loved, and it was soft and it was tender and it was _devastating_ , to be gentled like that, to be wanted like that, to feel Aziraphale’s hand cupping his cheek, his cold fingers and his cold nose and the heat of his mouth, the certainty of it and the confession of it and the silent _knowing_ of it, that this, _yes_ , this was _theirs_ , this was _only_ and _every_ and _all_ , all that mattered and all that they needed, all that they wanted, and Aziraphale tasted like laughter and snow and a night divine, kissing Crowley and kissing Crowley, and nothing else in the world even _existed_ for a long, long time. 

When Crowley finally drew back, breathing hard, cracked open along all his edges, undone and unmade, Aziraphale had snowflakes caught in his hair, in his eyelashes, and his smile, that beaming smile, lit up the night. 

Crowley was in love. 


	12. Trimming the Tree

Crowley looked down the interminable stretch of polished mahogany to the shadows gathering around the other end of the table. Above, the cavernous ceiling disappeared into darkness; the great fireplace was not lit, and probably hadn’t been for months. There was a smell of damp that lingered in the halls of Tadfield Manor these days, and a chill in the air that never dispersed, and the three faces looking back at him out of the gloom were ghoulish and grotesque, as if there was a rot eating away under their skin. 

“Imagine,” Crowley said with a conspiratorial grin, snapping on the ancient overhead projector that Madame Tracy had got from Deirdre Young, who’d had it in a closet up at the primary school, “a pine tree.”

He hadn’t slept the night before. Aziraphale had walked him back to the Inn—and it had taken forever, because they kept stopping one another, pulling each other back in, kissing and kissing, with Crowley’s back pressed roughly into the trunk of the Big Willow, with Aziraphale’s hands cold on his face in the warm lamplight just under the watchful eye of the clock tower, with foreheads pressed together between long, lingering goodbyes outside the door of the pub—and then left him, disappearing down the high street with the growing flurries as the night set in. Crowley had gone up to his room, thrown himself down on the bed with the heels of his eyes pressed into his eyes, laughing, and then promptly had a complete and total absolutely world-class, award-winning panic attack. 

He’d mean to tell Aziraphale everything. He’d meant to tell him about Morningstar & Prince, to confess that he’d been at Tadfield Manor meeting with the developers who wanted to bring an apocalypse upon this little village, to swear to him that he wouldn’t let that happen. To explain the options, to soothe the fears, to promise and promise and promise that he would help them, that he would fight for them, and save them if he could.

And then Aziraphale had reached up and _kissed_ him, and Crowley—Crowley had known it wouldn’t be enough. 

It wouldn’t be enough until he had the deal signed, sealed, and delivered, tidied off with a neat little bow that said, _Tadfield High Street: KEEP OUT_. It wouldn’t be enough to promise to try. Crowley had to make it reality. 

_I can fix this,_ he had told himself when he could finally breathe again, hauling himself back out of the bed and digging into his notes and files, throwing open his laptop and booting up Madame T’s archaic internet. _I can fix this. Please, God, show me how to fix this._

He had spent hours digging through case law, pulling statute after statute, searching record after record, underlining clauses in the leases for the Oxfam shop, the bookshop, the off-licence, the cafe, the inn and pub, doing unofficial deed searches in databases and search engines for all of them, searching the sellers—a single family operation, by the looks of it, called the Sanctus Corporation—looking for anything that might throw a wrench in the development and knock it off-course. He wrote his notes furiously on a blank sheet of paper, and when he ran out of room on that, right onto Madame T’s desk. By the time dawn had seeped into the room, Crowley had slumped in his seat, breathless, his hand cramping and his neck sore and his eyes aching. 

But he’d had a plan. He was going to fix this. 

“Pine trees,” Crowley went on, ignoring the looks of disinterested detachment that constituted Zuigiber, Sable, and White—he was pretty sure they never looked anything other that disinterested and detached anyway, so that was all right—and standing up from the table to better illustrate his imaginary tree, “are pretty standard, right? Coniferous trees with needle-type leaves, closely packed branches, vaguely conical shape. Yet there are loads of different kinds out there: fraser firs, douglas firs, noble firs, white firs, blue spruces, Norway spruces, Scotch pines, white pines. The thing about pine trees is that they might look the same, at least on the outside, but their _longevity_ , what they might be capable of, are all different.”

White tilted their head. “Is this an analogy or a sales pitch?”

“I’m not sure I want either,” Sable added. 

“Analogy,” Crowley said quickly, “but stay with me a second, I’m getting to the point.” 

One of Zuigiber’s long red nails tapped the tabletop, threatening to leave a scratch in the varnish. The table was, at Crowley’s best estimate, probably at least two hundred years old, as old as the house itself; something tightened in his throat at the sight of the unspoken threat. “Quite quickly, if you don’t mind.” 

Crowley jumped to it, and hated himself. “Point is, lots of different types of pine trees, but not all of them are suitable for, shall we say, _redevelopment_. It takes the perfect pine tree, with the right strength, the right needles, the right dryness and the right smell, to become a Christmas tree.” He swapped his little black-and-white pine tree outline out on the projector for one with baubles drawn in. He tapped the baubles one after the other. “This is where you get the good stuff. The stuff that makes the tree worthwhile. The lights and the ornaments and the tinsel, with a great big bloody star on top. But if the tree can’t hold the baubles, it all falls down. Just another pine tree in the woods.” 

The three faces at the other end of the table exchanged dubious looks. Crowley pressed on anyway, swapping out the projector’s photo again, this time to a photo of the town he’d gone to see up past Oxford, where Zuigiber, Sable, & White had put in a redevelopment two years ago. In it, the town looked like it was thriving. “Here’s an example of a good Christmas tree.” He quickly swapped it out again, this time for an image of Tadfield. “And _here_ ,” he said, “is one that’s _not_.” 

The presentation lasted an hour, and Zuigiber, Sable, and White did not interrupt him again. They asked no questions; they made no comments amongst themselves. They only watched, steady and impassive, as Crowley threw graph after graph of statistics down onto the projector, population growth and economy, both of which had been stagnant to dropping for a decade, the local school rating, which was fine but nothing to write home about and certainly nothing enticing for new families, the movements of the Sanctus Corporation, which had been off-loading properties in the area for the past eleven years, the only one of which to have been successfully developed into anything other than farmland was the plot of land the Comfort Inn sat on, outside of town just off the freeway. He showed them real estate listings for other properties, including six in towns outside Tadfield entirely; the only one he showed them that was in Tadfield was the plot that existed right next to the Comfort Inn, listed already for several thousand pounds lower than the fair market value and which was presently a barren field.

This would work. This would have to work. They’d be fools not to see that this was the best option. 

“ _Therefore_ ,” Crowley concluded triumphantly, “it is my professional and legal advice that you forget about Tadfield high street, and instead take advantage of the numerous opportunities that Oxfordshire can guarantee. To continue pursuing the current deal would be tantamount to inviting an apocalypse for Zuigiber, Sable, & White, and after all, it’s a pretty shit Christmas if the tree won’t stay standing, isn’t it?”

To himself, grinning so hard he was almost laughing, Crowley added, _can I hear a wahoo?_

At the far end of the table, three blank faces looked back at him. 

The silence dragged on. 

And on. 

And on. 

Crowley’s triumph slowly began to melt away, and dread took its place, sliding down his spine like ice and ash, blackened and freezing. The silence dragged on.

Finally all three of them stood. Zuigiber tapped her nails again on the table, then slammed her hand down, making Crowley jump, and walked toward him, dragging the stiletto nail of her index finger along the entire length of the table, leaving a long, visible gash in the varnish. 

“We expect to have the finalised deal in our hands by the end of this week,” she said evenly, lifting the nail from the table and using it to tap Crowley’s cheek, unsettling and sinister. “Don’t waste our time like this again.” 


	13. Wishes

Crowley stood at the end of the high street for a long time, watching as the afternoon slipped away from Tadfield. People came and went, popping in and out of the pharmacist and the post office, stopping occasionally to catch up with someone else, hands easy on each other’s forearms as they said hello and goodbye. A couple of men came out of the Queen’s Head and started tacking garland up around the windows; the group of jogging mums went through. He was beginning to recognise their faces.

Somewhere out in the world, Hastur and Ligur were drafting the final version of their proposal on behalf of Duke & Duke and the Sanctus Corporation. Judging by the last conversation Crowley had had with his clients, he had no doubt that it would be accepted and signed by the end of the week.

Crowley couldn’t fix this. He’d tried for protections for the current tenants, and they’d been shot down. He’d suggested other properties, and they’d been dismissed. He’d pointed out flaws in the sellers, in the village, in the land itself, and his clients had turned away; they’d already stopped listening.

He hated clients that didn’t bloody listen.

The sun was beginning to dip behind the line of the horizon. The fairy lights would be coming on soon; the pubs would start to fill with the regulars. Newt and Anathema would handle their dinner rush of teenagers drinking black coffees and sharing plates of chips. Madame Tracy would pull pints and serve tea, depending on what exactly she could see in the set of someone’s shoulders, in the furrow of their brow. And Aziraphale—Aziraphale would be looking for him. 

Aziraphale, with his bright eyes and his bright smile and the flush in his cheeks, with the bow-tie and the worn-out old waistcoat and the deceptive strength in his hands. Aziraphale, who had strong opinions on Shakespeare and stronger opinions on hot cocoa, who told stories to children and who collected histories as if searching for something familiar in them. Aziraphale, who had sat with Crowley in the dark and who had walked with Crowley in the moonlight, who had held his hand in the sunshine, who had kissed him, so sweetly, goodnight. 

Aziraphale, who had trusted him.

Crowley had wanted so desperately to _fix this_ before it all fell apart, but he’d run out of time and he’d run out of options and he wished he’d told Aziraphale ages ago, wished he’d confided in him the moment he’d taken Aziraphale’s hand in the cafe that first dinner. Wished he had whispered it into the dark of his bathroom with Aziraphale’s hand steadying the ice on his forehead; wished he had confessed it out in the moonlight as soon as Aziraphale had turned to him with intention in his eyes. He wished he’d told Aziraphale, but he hadn’t. 

Wishes were a fantasy: worthless.

His mistakes, wish as he might, were not worthless; they came at the highest price. He didn’t doubt for a second that it was going to cost him everything. 

_I came here to do a job_ , he wished he had said, and he’d had a hundred chances since they’d first met and he’d taken none of them, and he’d fallen in love with someone who didn’t know him well enough to really love him back. Someone who might not ever love him now, now that Crowley was going to tell him truth. _I came here to do a job, but then I met you._

He couldn’t ask Aziraphale to forgive him, and he wouldn’t. He couldn’t ask Aziraphale to love him, and he wouldn’t. But he could ask Aziraphale to fight, to help him undo what was already being done, to lead the attack and to stand up against the destruction being planned against their home, their lives, to take whatever information Crowley could give him and wield it as a weapon to save Tadfield. He could ask Aziraphale to channel that fury and that betrayal into protecting this place, and he could pray that Aziraphale would succeed with his hope and his honesty and his _heart_ where Crowley and his secrets had failed. 

He took a deep breath, raising his chin, and started toward the cafe. 

He couldn’t stop Zuigiber, Sable & White from going through with this deal, but he didn’t have to make it bloody easy for them.

*

The cafe was, of course, the logical place to start looking for Aziraphale, but that didn’t make it any easier to step through the door to the ring of the bell and watch as Anathema’s face lit up in wicked excitement. _There really ought to be a guide for this sort of thing_ , Crowley thought despairingly. There ought to be some kind of handbook, a handy little pamphlet on _how-to-tell-someone-you’ve-been-sneaking-around-selling-their-town-out-from-underneath-them-in-six-easy-steps._

 _Step one,_ he reminded himself. _Find Aziraphale. Tell Aziraphale first; he will know how to rally the rest of them._

“ _There_ you are,” Anathema teased, hands on her hips. She craned her neck to look behind him. “Where’s Aziraphale? You two were awfully quick to sneak off after the carols last night—don’t even think we didn’t notice.”  
  
“Nothing happened,” Crowley said, which was not entirely true, but Anathema could tease him later—if, that was, Anathema was still speaking to him later—it was beside the point right now. “And I was hoping you could tell me.”

“Nobody says nothing happened unless something actually did happen,” Anathema shot back, but after a moment her grin started to fade and her hands fell to her sides as she looked him over. “What’s the matter, what’s happened? You look terrible.”

“Oh, thanks,” Crowley said sarcastically, even though it was true--he hadn’t slept, he’d _barely_ showered, he could feel the first pins of pressure that would become a migraine later. “Look, nothing’s happened with Aziraphale, it’s—it’s not to do with him, not really. I need to talk to him though.” 

“I’ll call him,” Anathema nodded. “Go on, have a seat while you wait.” 

She disappeared back into the kitchens, and Crowley slumped into a booth, fighting the urge to bury his head in his arms. After a minute or two Newt appeared with a cup of tea, extra-milky the way everyone’s mums made it when they were kids, and a couple of chocolate biscuits. Crowley stared at them. “No,” he said hoarsely, “no, don’t be nice to me, I can’t take it right now.” 

“Probably means you need it most right now,” Newt offered. “Aziraphale’ll be right over.”

Crowley looked up at him. He still had that wide-eyed, perpetually uncertain look to him, but there was also a surprising solidity behind him, as if his common sense was a force unto itself, and everything was reasonable just because it _was_ , until it wasn’t. “How long have you lived in Tadfield?”

“Hmm. About four years or so,” Newt said. “Anathema—this cafe’s been in her family for as long as anyone can remember. We were just out of uni, working these terrible something-or-other jobs, and she said she just _knew_ she had to come back here and keep it going. Was never a question, really.”

“And you came with her?”

Newt looked back toward the kitchen, where Anathema could be seen talking to someone on an ancient-looking landline with a twisting cord, an unconscious smile on his face. “Wouldn’t you?” he asked. “For _that_ person, wouldn’t you do just about anything?” 

Crowley laughed hollowly. “Don’t we all want to think that about ourselves? That we’d always do the right thing for _that_ person? That we _are_ , even when we aren’t really?” 

“I think there’s a difference,” Newt said, “between doing what’s right for them, and doing what they’re telling you is right for them. Anathema told me it was right for her to come back to the cafe, and so it was easy to do with her.” He looks at Crowley for a long moment, that wide-eyed gaze suddenly impenetrable. “What did Mr Aziraphale tell you was right for him?” 

“I didn’t ask,” Crowley admits. 

Newt looked at him steadily. “Maybe you should.”

The bell above the cafe door rang again, and Aziraphale came in, pink-cheeked and wind-swept, his hands twisting around themselves, his eyes searching the cafe until he spotted Crowley and Newt with visible relief. He was wearing that cream scarf again, with little gold wire-framed glasses, and _God_ , it was awful, but Crowley was in love. 

“That’s what I came to do,” Crowley told Newt, not taking his eyes off Aziraphale as he got up from the booth. “It just might be too late.”

“Too late for what?” Aziraphale asked, looking him up and down, concern etched in every feature. His hands jittered against one another, like he was aching to reach out and barely stopping himself. “Are you all right? Anathema told me something was wrong.” 

“Yeah, m’fine, angel,” Crowley said. He cleared his throat, took a deep breath. “I just—we need to talk. If you want to come back up to mine, we can have a little privacy?”

Aziraphale was already shaking his head. “We can go to mine,” he said, and Crowley swayed a little on the spot at the idea of it—the invitation of it, the intimacy of it, and at a moment like this, of all the damned moments. Aziraphale may have been to _his_ room already, but that was just a hotel room, the necessities of Crowley’s life kept in bags. Aziraphale’s would be different: a home, a _sanctuary_. “Less likely to be interrupted.” 

“I don’t mind the Inn,” Crowley croaked. 

“Let us know if we can do anything,” Newt offered, shoving the chocolate biscuits, now wrapped in a napkin, into Crowley’s hand. “And I don’t think it’s too late, you know,” he added, as if Aziraphale couldn’t hear him. “Look at who you’re standing with. It’s not too late.” 

*

The wind outside had picked up a little, and the chill was beginning to turn bitter and harsh. Crowley curled in on himself as he followed Aziraphale down the pavement, past the Oxfam shop, his eyes on his feet. He could see Aziraphale’s too, just inside his periphery. 

“Really,” he tried again. “The Inn would’ve been fine, angel.”

“It’s no bother,” Aziraphale said, and his feet veered a little to the left, and then came to a stop. Crowley looked up—they had stopped in front of the bookshop, the one that always looked a little half-abandoned whenever Crowley walked past. 

_Please don’t_ , Crowley wished, suddenly and frantically. _Please don’t be doing this._

In slow motion, Aziraphale lifted his hand, and fit a key into the door, and swung it open. He looked back at Crowley, and, with a shy, oblivious smile, said, “Welcome home.”

Two doors down from the cafe on the high street. The bookshop. Crowley had read this lease; he had examined this property’s numbers. He knew the fair market value and the expected increase over the next five years; he knew the maintenance records and the anticipated raise in rent and the value of the flat upstairs and the success rates of similarly-sized independent bookshops in similarly-situated towns in Oxfordshire and three other counties. 

_Unusual and Antiquarian Books_ , all the papers had said, in the place of the lessee. _Welcome home._

Crowley closed his eyes. 

_Oh, no,_ he thought. _Oh, fuck._


	14. Family Traditions

Time, as best as it can be defined, is indefinite: the eternal, continuing sequence of events, of _existence_ , all tumbling forward in an irreversible succession, one movement after the next after the next after the next. The present, disappearing into the past; the future, overtaking the present. The problems of _defining time_ , discussed and debated and hotly disputed by philosophers and scientists and theologians and bureaucrats the world over, is that it is first circulatory—you cannot define the concept without relying on the concept—and that it is, second, entirely relative.

Time, for Crowley, had stopped.

Aziraphale stood in the open door of the bookshop, looking back at him with a hand extended. _Welcome home,_ he’d said, echoing Crowley’s own thoughts not so very long ago, thoughts he’d thought while looking at Aziraphale, while falling in love with Aziraphale. _Welcome home_ , he’d said, and Crowley had felt his ribs crack open and his heart burn out the core of him, leaving him empty and blackened, scorched and shaking, because Aziraphale _meant_ it, and Crowley would have to hand it back to him with his own two hands and nothing better to say than _I_ _’m sorry._

Crowley took a deep breath, picked the pieces of himself up off the pavement, and slid his hand into Aziraphale’s. A shiver passed through him like a premonition, a vision of fire, and then time began to tick forward again as he followed Aziraphale inside.

 _I love you_ , Crowley thought, but he already knew it wouldn’t be enough.

*

Aziraphale closed the door behind them, and then they were alone, standing in the dark.

The last of the light had finally faded away outside, leaving only the fluorescent shine of street lamps to illuminate the shop. Books rose out of the shadows like ghosts, like reaching hands, heaped into disordered rows and haphazard stacks, leading into a hedge maze of dust and leather. There was a dry desert smell to all of it, the smell of old pages and book bindings; the air was still and silent and heavy, closing in on them, weighing down on them. It felt like a ruin, Crowley thought, like a crumbling castle, thick with hauntings and enchantments; it felt like an abandoned garden, turned wild and overgrown.

“It’s not much,” Aziraphale admitted, his gaze wandering as if he could just now see it with new eyes, as if he could see it the way anyone else might have seen it: disorganized and strange. His shoulders were tense beside Crowley, his smile strained. He let go of Crowley’s hand, leaving him by the door, and stepped just into the shadows to rearrange a stack or two. “It’s mine, though.”

And it was, it really was, because for all it was gloomy and foreboding, for all that it was like stepping into the twilight of a whole world, it had all those same secret nooks and crannies, all that same towering understanding and that same seeking reach toward knowledge. It had all that same ancient familiarity that looked at Crowley and said, _Welcome home._

Crowley loved it, of course. Crowley couldn’t not love it.

“It’s miraculous, angel,” he said, wondering if Aziraphale would remember this moment differently, in the aftermath. If Aziraphale would remember this, and wonder if he meant it. The thought made Crowley’s chest ache, but he couldn’t stop himself from saying it anyway. “It’s beautiful.”

Aziraphale met his eyes in the dark with a small, soft smile, which faded as he remembered why they were there in the first place. “Are you all right?” he asked. “You said you needed to talk—is it about last night?”

Crowley shook his head. “No. Well, it’s not, but it’s also not _not_ about last night--it’s complicated.”

“It’s just, I know this is quite fast,” Aziraphale said, shrugging a little, almost painfully nonchalant, “and I know you’ll be going back to London soon anyway, and I want you to know I don’t have any expectations, really, and it’s certainly not like you’ve not made me any promises—”

“No, Aziraphale, hey,” Crowley cut off, slipping between Aziraphale and the table he was fussing with, nearly stumbling in the dark of the shop, but it was worth it to stop that thought continuing. He took the book Aziraphale had been fussing with and set it back on top of its precarious pile, then took Aziraphale’s hands again, both of them this time, making Aziraphale look, begging Aziraphale to understand this, if nothing else. If nothing else tonight, Crowley needed him to understand this.

“Listen,” he said, elbows aching, heart pounding, “I—I would—I want you to have expectations, all right? All the expectations. That’s where I’m coming from, all right? I want you to know I’d make any promise, and I—”

 _I_ _’m sorry,_ he needed to say, _I_ _’m sorry and I’m trying and I need you and I want you and I don’t want to lose you,_ but none of that would come out, and if Aziraphale heard any of it trapped in his throat, he didn’t seem to notice. Instead he lifted a hand to Crowley’s cheek, brushing a thumb across the skin right under the rim of Crowley’s sunglasses.

“I would too,” Aziraphale whispered, and then he kissed Crowley.

It was a slow, soft thing, almost unbearably sweet, and Crowley could feel all those promises being made to him in the pressure of lips, in the movement of jaws; he could feel vows and pledges, pacts and oaths as they were sworn to him in the gentle touch of Aziraphale’s fingertips to his cheek, of Aziraphale’s tongue to his bottom lip, exalted and sacrosanct, hallowed and holy, as if the shift and the heat and the taste of Crowley’s mouth was a benediction Aziraphale meant to learn by rote, and Crowley was helpless against it, clutching at Aziraphale’s hands, at his shoulders, stumbling again in an effort to get closer, and Aziraphale caught him, Aziraphale held him, backed him into a bookshelf, steadied him, holding him closer, holding him tighter. Crowley lost himself to the press and the pull of it, to the smell of Aziraphale’s skin and the taste of Aziraphale’s voice, to the faint light and the smell of dust, to the books lined up against his back, all those stories, all those histories, all that truth.

“Angel,” Crowley finally managed, wrenching himself back to reality, gasping at the gentle graze of Aziraphale’s teeth. “ _Aziraphale,_ wait, hang on.”

Aziraphale drew back, and even in the dark Crowley could see that his cheeks were flushed, that his lips were reddened. “All right?”

“Yeah.” He could hardly catch his breath; his hands had started to tremble again. “Yeah, I just—we need to talk.”

“Oh, yes,” Aziraphale said, blinking as if he were still a little stunned and just coming back into himself. He stepped away, straightening his waistcoat, his bow-tie, and blushed even harder. “Of course, right. We ought to go into the back, actually. There’s a fire lit back there.” He offered his hand out to Crowley again, glancing toward the maze of stacks. “It’s, erm. It’ll be dark, through here. And a bit crowded in places.”

 _Difficult to navigate_ , he meant, _with your sunglasses on,_ but he didn’t advise that Crowley take them off and he didn’t try to make some rushed, convoluted explanation or apology, and that was all right, really.

Crowley took his hand once more, and said, “Lead the way.”

*

Aziraphale guided Crowley carefully through the winding labyrinth, directing “tumbled stack to the left” here and “a bit narrow right through here” there, as easily as if he’d always done it, as if he already knew where the hazards of his ramshackle shop were to a man wearing dark sunglasses. The rows went on and on, twisting and turning back on themselves, but just when Crowley had begun to wonder whether there really _was_ an end to all of it, the shadows began to lift, giving way to a warm flickering glow.

If the shop itself was Aziraphale, then the back room was his heart: warm and full of light, hidden away and kept safe, cramped and shoved full with still more books, with glass cases and odd artefacts—a globe here, a plaster Shakespearian bust there, a star map, what appeared to be half of a suit of armor. There was, as promised, a fire going in the grate, tucked behind an ornate wrought-iron screen, with a sagging sofa and a plush armchair crowded around it, both of them strewn with thick, heavy blankets. Crowley wanted to sink down into this place, to let himself be carried away like an ember in the air, to let the spark of himself be fanned into a flame.

This was the price he was going to pay, then. This was what he had bought his clients—this was what he had slated for destruction: comfort, and warmth, and a slow, steady pulse of happiness.

“Tea?” Aziraphale offered, bustling into the little room. “Or maybe a glass of wine? I have a nice enough Barbaresco around here somewhere. Have a seat; I’ll pour us a glass.”

He moved around the room with such ease, side-stepping a pile of old newspapers, reaching blindly into a roll-top desk stuck at the halfway point to pull out two long-stemmed glasses and a corkscrew. The room almost seemed to move around him in return, enfolding him into its embrace; Crowley stepped in hesitantly after him, half-worried that it would spit him back out, and found a seat on the sofa, the leather butter-smooth with age and a little heated from the fire. It was just as comfortable as he’d imagined it.

“Here we are,” Aziraphale said, unearthing a bottle of wine from what looked like a treasure chest. “Not exactly a collector’s vintage, but it’ll be quite good, I should think.” He set the two glasses on the coffee table in front of the sofa and set himself to uncorking and pouring, then lifted one into Crowley’s hand. With the light of the fire behind him, he looked as if he were glowing, as if he were haloed, and Crowley was grateful for the wine so that he could finally look away.

It was impossible to start a conversation like this with any grace. He hemmed and hawed over his options while they each sipped away nearly half their glasses, and finally he settled on, “You didn’t tell me you ran the bookshop.”

Aziraphale cleared his throat, and only then did Crowley realise how patient he’d been, waiting quietly for Crowley to gather his thoughts. “Ah, no,” he admitted. “I suppose I didn’t. I don’t talk about it much. Don’t like to draw attention to it.”

“You run a shop you don’t like to draw attention to?”

“Well, _run a shop_ is such a strong way of putting it,” Aziraphale said, wrinkling his nose. “It’s more like having a private collection I occasionally have to let other people rifle through.”

Crowley took another sip of wine and sat back into the sofa, raising an eyebrow. “And you were—what? Afraid I’d come rifling through it?”

“I wasn’t hiding it, if that’s what you’re getting at,” Aziraphale said, raising an eyebrow back. “I’m not used to discussing it; it doesn’t need to be discussed with anyone in Tadfield anyway. And besides,” he added, “it’s not as if you _asked,_ and you didn’t say either, you know. What you do, day-to-day. You’ve only said you’re here on holiday.”

It was a question without being a question asked, and Crowley found he wasn’t quite ready to answer it. He wanted just a few more moments, just a few more seconds with Aziraphale like this, imagining for an instant that they were two different people, that this shop had been on any other block, what those people might have been like, how a night like this might have gone. Crowley found himself mourning it, just a little—who they could have been. “What would you do if you didn’t have the bookshop?”

Aziraphale frowned. “I hardly know,” he answered, then he huffed an odd sort of laugh and took a long sip of wine. “I’ve always had it.”

“There must’ve been some time when you didn’t. When you were just getting started.”

“Not really,” he said. “The foundational collection here was my parents’—books they had started collecting before I was even born, and growing up I always knew that these books were mine, would be mine.” He gave that laugh again, self-conscious and maybe even a little disparaging, Crowley thought, as if he was hearing a familiar criticism that neither he nor Crowley had voiced. “Don’t know who I’d be without the bookshop,” he went on. “Not sure if there’s anything else _to_ me, really.”

Crowley wanted to reassure him— _oh, of course there is, I didn_ _’t even know you had the shop and I fell arse over tea-kettle in love with you—_ but knew it wouldn’t help. Instead he looked at Aziraphale for as long as he could stand, trying to memorise his face, his profile, his silhouette, watching as he drank his wine and lost himself a little in his thoughts. He was beautiful, Crowley thought, and he deserved better. He deserved better than whatever voice he could hear echoing in this room, and he deserved better than a property owner that would sell his heart and his soul from underneath his feet without so much as a by-the-by.

He deserved better than Crowley, too.

Crowley said, “I’m not actually here on holiday.”

Aziraphale looked over at him, his glass of wine stopped halfway to his lips. “What do you mean?”

“I’m not here on holiday,” Crowley repeated. “That’s what I needed to tell you. I’m a solicitor, out of London. My boss sent me up to finish the negotiations on a real estate transaction, and, well. I did. I didn’t want to, but it happened, and it’s over, and they’ll have the signatures in by the end of this week.” He paused, looking at Aziraphale and looking at Aziraphale, trying to drink in this _last moment_ , the last one he’d ever have with him like this, before pushing out the rest. “It was this shop, Aziraphale.”

Aziraphale stared at him. “What?”

“It’s this shop.” He felt like his stomach was trying to escape his body through his rib cage. He felt like his heart was trying to climb up his throat. His hands were cramped and trembling, and he had to put the glass of wine down, unfinished, before he either dropped it or spilled it or threw up into it—he wasn’t sure which seemed more likely, at the moment. Crowley was _in love_ and Crowley was _hurting him_ , and he felt like he was falling apart. “It’s this shop, that’s being sold. It’s this whole stretch of the high street, from the Inn down to the off-licence on the corner. They’re going to replace it with—I don’t know. Some fancy new development, retail and restaurants, block of flats overhead, and God, Aziraphale, I tried to stop it, I really did, but the whole thing’s done. It’s done. Just waiting on signatures.”

For a long, horrible minute, Aziraphale didn’t say anything; it was as if time had stopped again. Then he heaved in a breath. “What—but I—who negotiated this? Was it _Gabriel?_ ”

Crowley blinked. “Gabriel? No, no, I only deal with the solicitors on the other side. If this—Gabriel, whoever, if they own the property, if they’re with the Sanctus Corporation, I never met them. I don’t deal with them.”

“And they—and _you_ negotiated it?”

“I was _assigned_ ,” Crowley tried to explain, scooting to the edge of the sofa, leaning in. “I didn’t choose these clients, and I wouldn’t—Aziraphale, I _tried_ , I’ve been trying. Tried to get the developers interested in a different property, tried to get them interested in different towns even, all over Oxfordshire. I don’t _want_ them to make this sale—they’ll tear everything down and build some horrible modern thing, and it’ll destroy this town, trust me, and I’ve been trying to days to think of a way to protect everyone but they’re not listening to me and I—”

But Aziraphale wasn’t listening. “You did this,” he whispered, horrified. “You and Gabriel, sneaking around behind my back.”

“I don’t _know Gabriel—_ ”

“Oh, do you expect me to believe that,” Aziraphale snapped, his eyes flashing back up to Crowley’s, and _Christ_ , they shone in the firelight. “No, you came in here and you—you _flirted_ with me, you _pretended_ with me, you _lied to me—_ ”

“Only in the beginning!” Crowley protested, and knew immediately that he shouldn’t have.

Aziraphale went unnaturally still and unnaturally white, as if he weren’t even breathing. _“Only in the beginning?”_

“No, that’s not what I mean, what I mean is—I needed some information on the town, yes, I did, but it was never—I _wanted_ to spend that time with you, I wanted to be there with you—”

Aziraphale kept going, talking over him, and they were talking over each other now, their voices raising, their hands gesturing, Aziraphale running through each time they’d sat together, each moment they’d had, tearing all of them to shreds as Crowley tried and failed to hold the pieces together. “Did you just—report everything back to them? Gabriel and Michael and the lot, sitting around having a laugh at me?”

_“What—”_

“The first snows, and the dinners—all those times we just _conveniently_ ran into one another—the carols—the _jumper_ , oh, they probably loved that, did you show it off for them? And—”

“No—”

“And your _migraine—_ do you even get migraines? Did you just make that up to avoid being out on a proper date with me? Oh, and I couldn’t even take the hint, you all must have had a perfectly _jolly_ time over that—”

“No, of course not—” Crowley put his hands in his hair and pulled, trying to think, trying to put the words together. What could he say that Aziraphale would believe, what could he say that Aziraphale would _understand._ “That was _real_ , angel, this was all _real—_ I don’t know who in Hell you’re even talking about!”

“My _family!_ _”_

An eerie silence fell over the bookshop, and they stared at one another, both of them breathing hard as if they’d been running. The pieces all slotted into place, one horrible thing after the next after the next after the next, all crashing down around him like dominoes. _His family._

Crowley swallowed heavily. His tongue felt thick and awkward in his mouth. “Your—your family runs the Sanctus Corporation? They own this property?”

“They don’t anymore, it seems,” Aziraphale said, and he finally set his wine glass down. “I think you should leave now.”

“I didn’t know,” Crowley breathed. “I didn’t know, I swear it, Aziraphale, I didn’t know. I’ve been trying to stop this all from happening and I was going to tell you as soon as I had, I had graphs, I had charts, I had other listings for them to consider, Deirdre Young even let me borrow an _overhead projector_. I am doing _everything_ I possibly can without losing my job—”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale interrupted, his voice firm but calmer now, as if he were packing the panic up and putting it away even as they spoke, and that was worse than the anger had been, Crowley thought, that was worse than the fight: the giving up. “I think you should go.”

“Then come with me,” Crowley tried. He didn’t have anything left to lose anyway; it was already sifting through his fingers like sand, like stardust. “Come with me to London, we can—we can pack up all your books and put them in my flat, somehow, I don’t know. Or we can get you another storefront, somewhere _beautiful,_ somewhere away from all of this, in Kensington or, or Soho, even, we can just leave all this behind and go off together—”

“Do you even hear yourself?” Aziraphale asked. “We’re not friends, Crowley—”

“We’re _more than that--_ you _know_ we are, you _know_ this is real, angel, you have to know.”

“Don’t call me that,” Aziraphale said, and it was as if the fight in him had all been drained out at once. He sat back in his chair, sagging into it with defeated shoulders and a horribly lost expression. “I’m not an angel, I’m just trying to live my life, and _you_ are a—a—a _demon,_ and you lied and lied, and I don’t know what’s real, Crowley. I don’t know if any of it was real. I don’t _know_ you.”

Crowley couldn’t feel his hands anymore. He couldn’t feel his own chest, his own mouth; he wasn’t entirely sure he even existed anymore. “You don’t believe that, Aziraphale. I know you don’t.”

Aziraphale looked at him as if he couldn’t see him. As if Crowley wasn’t even there. “I’m not really surprised, you know,” he went on, as if Crowley hadn’t spoken. “Gabriel’s been selling off family assets for years. Putting people off their farms that they’d rented from us for generations, carving Tadfield into bits. Suppose I should’ve expected to be next. Just another asset, in the end. It’s practically a family tradition at this point, isn’t it?”

“Let me help you then,” Crowley pleaded. “Or come away with me, away from all of this. You don’t have to just sit there and do as you’re told.”

Aziraphale looked over at him, studying him for a long moment, and then turned back to look into the fire and said, as quiet and polite as if he’d never seen Crowley before in his life, “The bookshop is closed, sir. Please see yourself out.”

Crowley stood up from the sofa. He waited for Aziraphale to change his mind. He waited for Aziraphale to say something, to say _anything._ He waited for Aziraphale to just bloody look at him, to _see him_ standing there, to see that he was still the same person that he was in the moonlight, to see that he was still the same person that he was on the floor of a tiny bathroom, to see that he was still the same person that he was in the park, over lunch, in the cafe, asking questions, waiting for answers.

He waited for Aziraphale to see that he was so terribly sorry, so terribly anxious to help, that he was still, still, still, still, _still_ so terribly in love, but Aziraphale didn’t look up.

Crowley had known, of course, that it wouldn’t be enough.

He had to find his own way out through the dark.


	15. Peppermint

Beez did not pick up her phone the first time Crowley called it.

Or the second time.

Or the third.

Crowley knew she had to have it with her—one did not become a top solicitor in London without completely throwing work-life balance out the window—and he knew she’d have it set up to receive calls. She was just being stubborn, and probably was also a little heat-drunk and pina-colada-soaked, sitting around some Aruban resort with Dagon doing whatever creepily soppy things solicitors did with one another when they went away on holiday—discussing tax reforms, most likely, or else debating the finer points of Brexit with all the privilege of someone who would not be especially affected by it, but who had a great number of very wealthy clients who would.

Fortunately for Crowley, and unfortunately for Beez, Crowley had spent all night at his desk trying to decide _what the fuck to do next,_ and by around six o’clock in the morning he had shot straight past agitated, rounded the corner of disturbed, and dived head-first into a boiling pool of _completely and totally unhinged_.

He could wait. He’d just fallen in love and found a place to belong and then burnt it all down with his heart wrapped inside, and he had nothing left to lose that wasn’t worth losing if he could just figure out a _next step_. He could bloody fucking wait.

Crowley didn’t actually know how many times he’d called by the time Beez finally did pick up her bloody fucking phone, but it was obviously enough to drive her up the bloody fucking wall, which: good. Other people should definitely be spitting mad at present. Crowley didn’t know how anyone could _not_ be spitting mad at present; he had some very strong suspicions about what he would feel if he _weren_ _’t_ spitting mad, and therefore he was clinging on to spitting mad for dear life.

“ _What?_ ” Beez snapped down the line.

“I need you to intervene in this negotiation,” Crowley snapped back, cutting to the chase. “I need you or—or Dagon, wasn’t it her file originally? Don’t care—one of you needs to call these _stupid fucking clients_ and stop this whole thing—I need more _time—_ this whole thing is _wrong,_ it’s just wrong— _fuck—_ ”

Beez’s voice was cool as peppermint when she finally got a word in, and honestly, it was sort of soothing, the dull, disinterested, no-nonsense way she works. Never one to panic or yell, never one to rush or hurry, Beez was a master at ruling her emotions. “Crowley. What’s going on.”

Of course, the ruling of one’s emotions was not something that Crowley himself particularly excelled at. “This whole bloody thing! You sent me up here so that you could—you could—and now _I_ have to—no. No, absolutely not. I need more time, Beez. I can get them set up in half a dozen other properties—this isn’t even a _good_ property, the town can’t sustain the redevelopment without serious economic investment from these guys and they’re not willing to—it’d be like cutting down a pine tree and taking it home, forgetting to water it and then being _mad_ when the needles start falling out, it’s—it’s— _ludicrous_.”

“So, what you’re saying is . . .”

“I need to stop the sale.”

Beez made a tight little _hmph_ sound. “You need to stop the sale. The one Dagon arranged. For the sale of what Dagon tells me is a useless, decrepit property to a very savvy, very influential development firm. Is there something wrong with the property titles?”

“I don’t know, I haven’t seen the titles—”

“Is there something wrong with the zoning?”

“No, the zoning’s fine, it’s—”

“Is there something wrong with the financing? Is it _illegal_ in some way?”

“No! They’re—they’re financed, they’re _beyond_ financed, really, it’s just—it’s this _town_ , Beez, it’s this _place—_ the people—they sing _carols_ , Beez, they all get together and they sing carols as karaoke, and they practically shut this place down when it snows so they can all go out to the park and play—when’s the last time you played in the snow, huh? When’s the last time? And they _take care_ of each other, and it’s all only possible because it’s kind of isolated out here, you know? Oxford’s just a touch too far and London’s hours away, and he even wears a bow-tie, and a pocket-watch, and his bookshop is like a maze but he _loves it_ and he needs it, I think, and Aziraphale’s family just—”

“ _Aziraphale?_ ”

Crowley paused; he had rather got off-track, hadn’t he? The way she said his name— _Aziraphale—_ was heavy and sceptical, dripping with disdain and disgust, that dull, disinterested tone evaporating away, and he _hated_ it. “That’s not the point,” he said, trying to dodge. “Point is, this town--”

Beez had turned positively frigid down the line; Crowley winced at the image of a glacier springing fully formed into the waters around Aruba. “Who. Is. Aziraphale?”

“I don’t ask about you and Dagon, all right—”

“ _Dagon_ gets her job done. _Dagon_ doesn’t muddy up the waters. _Dagon_ has sold real estate to those developers for two years, and she has never once called me up in a panic to tell me about pocket watches.”

Crowley sighed, and ran a hand over his face. This was not how he wanted this conversation to go, obviously; he’d imagined that he’d tell Beez the thing about the pine trees and the needles falling off, and she’d hum and ask about his numbers, the graphs and the statistics and the market rates, the things he’d worked so hard on to try to convince Zuigiber, Sable & White to walk away from the table, and then she’d agree and say _I_ _’ll have Dagon talk to them_ , and Dagon would and they’d back down, because it couldn’t be that they were so sold on this sale, it couldn’t be; they just didn’t like _Crowley_ , is all, and that’s fine, that would be fine because someone could still _fix it—_

“Beez,” Crowley said quietly, seriously. “Beatrice.” He hadn’t called her that since they were students still, since the first time Crowley had sat up with a migraine the night before a comparative law final, tears pooling involuntarily in his eyes as Beez looked coolly over the top of a flash card and asked him to recite the Zweigert classifications. _Remember?_ he was saying. _Remember how we helped each other? Help me again._ “I’m asking you. I’m _begging_ you to help me here. This sale—it’s not good for any of them. Not for the client, not for the town, not for anyone. I just need a little more time.”

There was a long and measured pause. Crowley looked out the window of his little room at the Inn, watching as the sun rose above the horizon. He’d spent all night searching for answers to questions he might have forgotten to ask, looking for what it was he’d missed, a reason Zuigiber, Sable & White were so fixed on this property, and he’d reached the very end of it. The very bottom. If Beez turned him down, he might as well pack his things up tonight and start the long drive back to London, back to his cold and lonely flat that he’d never thought was cold and lonely before, and look up _how-to-get-over-the-love-of-your-life-whom-you-met-last-week-and-then-promptly-betrayed-to-a-development-conglomerate_ on Google. Eat his weight in ice cream, probably. He didn’t even like ice cream. 

“Anthony Crowley,” Beez said, heaving a sigh, coming to some decision. “If you throw this deal because you got personally involved in a conflict of interest, I’ll put you out on the street. I’ll write you up for an ethics review before my flight even lands at Heathrow, and I will see to it directly that you’re blacklisted at every firm in London at the very least. You’re a traitor, Anthony, and an ethically-compromised solicitor is more dangerous than putting an eleven-year-old in charge of Armageddon. You throw this deal, and you’re done forever.”

She said all of this very calmly, but Crowley didn’t miss the way the _z_ crept into her voice, lengthening the ends of her consonants— _ethiczzz, dangerouzzz—_ betraying her fury.

“This _deal_ is unethical,” Crowley tried one last time. “It’ll destroy this town. It’ll destroy the peace they’ve built here. It’ll send them down into the pits of _Hell._ ”

“You’re not there to protect the _peace_ , Crowley. You’re there to protect our client and get signatures on paper. If you have to damn a few souls along the way, well, that’s the deal _you_ made as a solicitor. If you can’t handle that any longer, you’re worthless to us. If you actively work against us, I’ll destroy you.” 

He believed her.

“You know,” Crowley finally answered, “I’m on optimist, naturally. It’s hard to be a solicitor and an optimist at the same time. The clients that always wanted to do the worst things they could get away with, the _self-centredness_ that people are capable of, and here’s you, always looking out for the worst-case scenarios, always trying to think one step ahead in the worst direction. There’s no—here’s no hope in it, and I was always looking for it.”

“That’s always been your biggest weakness,” Beez agreed. “It’s time to put away the childish fantasies, Crowley.”

Out the window, the sun was bright, brilliant and beaming over Tadfield.

“You know what, Beez,” Crowley said. “I’d rather quit.”


	16. Blue Christmas

Crowley had lost Aziraphale, and Tadfield as they knew it was ending in just a few days. He was in his now ex-boss’s bad books, not that his boss had ever had any other kind, and he was finally completely and totally out of ideas.

Defeat sat poorly in Crowley’s stomach, making him nauseous and anxious in equal turn. He did not want to pack his belongings and leave the little room at the Inn, navigate down to the freeway and go back to London, where there would be no one to fill the empty spaces around him, no one to sit across from him in London's restaurants, no one to walk through St James' park with on a Saturday afternoon, catching snowflakes in their hair. Where he would spend a blue Christmas at home looking for leads on a new job with no one to make him a cup of tea, and no one to bring him a jumper because it was cold out, and no one to kiss him in the night.

He’d had all those things, and he’d destroyed them. He was starting to think that’s all he was good at: tearing things down.

Slowly, the belongings that had spread out over his room made their way back into his suitcase. Toiletries were collected from the bathroom; socks were retrieved from hiding places under the bed. He folded up his shirts and piled up his linens and gathered up his papers, and wished the whole time that someone would come, that someone would knock on his door, that someone would sense, somehow, that he was leaving, and rush to stop him, that someone would come and find him and say, _don_ _’t leave. Don’t leave, I want you to stay. Don’t leave, I love you too._

No one was coming, of course. Crowley knew that no one was coming.

The last thing left in his room when he was done packing was the jumper Aziraphale had brought him: cable-knit, the colour of parchment. It was soft to the touch, as if it had been worn in with age. Part of him wanted to take it with him, to put it on right then and let the heat of his own body warm the fibres, a reminder of better days, a remembrance of things lost. It smelled faintly like the bookshop, and something warmer too, like sunlight.

In the end, though, he left it hanging over the back of the desk chair. Madame T would know how to return it to its rightful owner, and not everything was meant to be remembered. Some things, when they are lost, are better to stay lost.

The pub downstairs was deserted, and the high street very nearly so, at this hour--late enough in the morning for the early birds to have flown back home, and yet still too early for the rest of the crowd to get themselves together and out into the chilly air. Crowley packed his things into the Bentley, craning for a look down at the bookshop, but the windows were dark and the sign on the door said, very emphatically, _CLOSED._

In front of the cafe, however, the door was being blocked by the same large overcoat masquerading as a man that had been in charge of the karaoke catalog on Sunday night. This time, instead of a microphone, he was wielding what appeared to be Anathema’s broom as if were a very long sword, and he did not inspire Crowley’s hopes for a cup of coffee before he crawled out of town.

Overcoat looked Crowley up and down with a stern expression that made him look as though he’d just found something horribly unpleasant in his shoe, ostentatiously repulsed. “S’you, innit?”

Crowley considered it. Through the door, he could see Anathema standing behind the counter, watching them with her arms crossed furiously over her chest. When she caught Crowley looking, she raised an eyebrow that, had it been loose on its own recognizance, was so sharp it could have cut a throat. He looked back at Overcoat and admitted, “It probably is, yeah.”

“Well, go on then,” Overcoat exclaimed, jabbing the bristled end of the broom at Crowley as if he were an overgrown hissing cat. “Don’t need none of you down here, do we? You’re a curse on this town, you are. Best to leave it quick!”

 _Well_ , Crowley thought, dodging the broom and making his way back to the Inn and Pub to check-out, _at least we agree on something._

*

Madame Tracy was waiting for him.

He must have just missed her on his way out the first time, because she looked quite prepared for him now: there was a mug of coffee sat on the bar in front of her, as well as a bacon butty that was probably from the Greggs up the road. She pointed at it without a word, indicating that he should sit and eat, and put her hands on her hips and pursed her lips, indicating that he should do so without a fuss.

“Not poisoned, is it?” he asked, sliding onto the barstool. She hadn’t put any cream or sugar in the coffee, but he didn’t dare ask her for it. “Or is it just a going-away present?”

All at once, Madame Tracy softened; her hands slipped off her hips and she produced her own cup of tea out of nowhere. “Met Mr Shadwell, did you?”

“Bloke in the coat?” Madame Tracy nodded, and Crowley snorted, taking a bite of the bacon butty. The coffee, bless her, was revolting. “Yeah, he’s a real charmer.”

She tsked, unaccountably fond. “Oh, he is, really, once you get past--well, all that. He runs the Oxfam shop next to the cafe--” Crowley noticed that she didn’t say _next to the bookshop--_ “but don’t let him fool you with any conspiracies, eh?”

Crowley raised an eyebrow. “Conspiracies?”

“Just the usual things.” As if there were such things as _usual things_ in rural village conspiracy theories. Crowley was beginning to suspect that rural villages were a lot more interesting than anyone gave them credit for. “Thinks half the things he gets into the shop are all witch paraphernalia, and the other half are things that might help if one were looking for a witch. Bit silly, really. Tadfield hasn’t been a witchy hotspot since the 60’s.”

Crowley’s eyebrow climbed another inch. “Good old days, were they?”

Madame T winked. “Never you mind that.”

He laughed around his bacon butty, and some of the tightness in his chest began to ease, only to be replaced with a flood of gratitude and guilt in equal measure. Gratitude at her unending kindness--her ability to foresee what he might need and her willingness to provide at least some small comfort; guilt that he had only ever repaid her in betrayals, that he had been the snake wrapping, deceptively slowly, around the neck of this town. It made the bacon butty taste like ash and dust in his mouth.

“What will you do?” he asked quietly. “Without the Inn?”

“Suppose I’ll be retiring,” Madame Tracy said, and she didn’t seem terribly bothered by it--or maybe that was just Crowley’s wishful thinking. “I have a bit tucked away. Might be enough for a little bungalow, and I expect Shadwell will come along as well. They say two can live as cheaply as one these days, after all, and it’d be nice to have a man about the house.”

Crowley privately thought that Shadwell was likely not the sort of man that would be at all nice to have about the house, but to each their own. He put on a congratulatory smirk, for her sake, and it was his turn to wink. “You and Shadwell, eh?”

Madame Tracy laughed, slapping at his arm a little. “Don’t be cheeky,” she reprimanded, though she did blush. “At any rate, he’ll likely be haunting the front of the shops for a few days until we get the final news, but I’m sure that by the time Mr Aziraphale comes back everything’ll be calmed down and sorted.”

Something thick and icy shoved its way into Crowley’s stomach, down his spine, freezing his hands and his brain and his mouth. He stared at her. “Comes back?” he finally managed. Places and ideas flashed through his mind: Aziraphale fleeing Tadfield in the middle of the night, packing up what books he could and running away like some kind of fugitive, escaping with suitcases full of books to Edinburgh or Paris or Rome. The bacon butty wondered if it was also going to flee the premises, but Crowley took a few stuttering breaths and managed, “What do you mean, comes back?”

“Said he was going home for a few days.” Madame Tracy suddenly had her hands full of things to do--surfaces to wipe down, glasses to rearrange, and she turned half away from Crowley. “To his brother’s--he still lives in the family house outside town, at Heaven’s Pointe. He was awfully distraught when we spoke to him this morning, early on. Said he was going to go home and sort himself out.”

 _Not_ an international getaway, then, but Crowley wasn’t exactly comforted. “Sort _himself_ out? What about sorting the sale out? Do you think he stands a chance at convincing his brother to stop it?”

Madame Tracy looked up from where she was needlessly restocking a basket of stirrer straws, and Crowley saw a glimmer there of something impatient, of something even resentful and irritated--kindness, then, but not without anger; forgiveness, maybe, but without being forgotten. She was a remarkable person, Crowley understood all at once, twice as gracious and three times as compassionate as anyone he might have known before. It was no small wonder that Aziraphale liked her.

“No,” she said quietly, obviously forcing her initial reaction back down. “Not if Gabriel’s already made his mind up--the eldest brother,” she explained, seeing the question of Crowley’s face. “They don’t get on, and Aziraphale’s never been good with standing up to them. There’s been a lot of pressure, you understand, to do what’s best for the _family_ , but of course it’s only Gabriel who decides what’s best, and his idea of importance runs toward tradition, reputation, that sort of thing. He’s been selling off the family holdings for ages, a farm here and there to some big conglomerate or silly developer, using the profits to advance his political goals, and well, Aziraphale, of course . . . ”

A picture was coming into focus for Crowley: the bookshop and the aesthetic, the deeply-ingrained habit of not speaking about either and the penchant for avoiding anything to do with his past. “He isn’t part of the traditions they want to uphold, is that it?”

“Exactly so,” Madame T nodded. “Their mother knew, of course, and she was a cold woman but she loved him fiercely, Mr Crowley, you must know that. She knew Aziraphale didn’t want anything to do with the business, so instead she arranged it in the will that he would inherit the shop on the high street for the books, and the rest of the siblings all inherited interests in the company.”

Crowley frowned, thinking back to all the papers he’d looked through while working the negotiations. “But he didn’t. He has a lease with Sanctus just like everybody else. I’ve seen it--his name’s not even on it, which is why I didn’t realise, it just says _Unusual and Antiquarian Books_.”

Madame T made a _pish-posh_ sort of motion with her hand and went on scrubbing at an imaginary spot on the bar. “Oh, that old thing,” she dismissed. “Gabriel makes him sign it for liability or insurance, something like that, but Mr Aziraphale’s never paid rent or any such thing. Can you imagine, out of that shop? He barely sells a book a month. No, he has the shop and the flat above it, and Sanctus pays all the utilities and tax and so on. Apparently it was a better deal for Gabriel to pay his expenses than it was for him to split the company again for Mr Aziraphale to take an equal interest.”

Every word she was saying lit up Crowley’s brain like a firework, and by the time she'd finish, he had clambered to his feet, bacon butty long forgotten, coffee long rejected.

“But then why sell it? _How_ could they sell it?” His heart was racing; the thick, icy dread in his stomach was changing, transforming into slick, glassy hope. “If he’s really inherited rights to the property, it can’t be that easy as Sanctus deciding they’re done. If it’s really in the will, he’d have rights--he might be able to stop the sale outright.”

Madame Tracy watched him pace a few steps back and forth, gaping. “I--I don’t know. You’d have to see the will, I suppose. It’s only what I’ve heard.” She reached a hand, trembling, across the bar toward him. “Do you really think he could stop it?”

Crowley didn’t know, but it was one more hope than he’d had an hour ago, one more avenue that had opened, and he would follow it to the very end. He took her hand in his. “Heaven’s Pointe, did you say?” 

She nodded, and squeezed his hand hard. “Just be careful with him, love.”

“I want to be more than careful,” Crowley promised. He was practically jittering out of his skin, he wanted to be so careful. “I want to take care of him. I want to protect him.”

“I know, my dear,” Madame Tracy answered, closing her other hand around his, trying to hold him still for a moment. “But it’s never so simple when it’s family.”

 _I love him,_ Crowley thought, squeezing her hands one last time and dashing out the door. _What could be more simple than that?_


	17. Home for the Holidays

Crowley wasn’t sure what he expected of a place named _Heaven_ _’s Pointe_ , but it sure as Hell wasn’t this.

He’d imagined a long, winding drive, a landscape studded with trees and ponds, a warm home tucked away into a wilderness with a curl of smoke rising from the chimney. Something idyllic, probably a little antique; something with candles in the windows and worn paint on the shutters and wild ivy creeping up the stonework. He’d imagined a sneak peek into Aziraphale’s childhood--a glimpse of all the places he might have hidden away with a good book, of all the places he might have explored in games and adventures. He’d imagined something inviting and comforting, peaceful and calm.

The house that the Bentley stopped in front of was not these things.

The sky had darkened in the few minutes it had taken Crowley to get here from Tadfield, and Heaven’s Pointe rose sharply against the backdrop of the grey storm clouds gathering. There were no trees, no ponds, no rolling hills, no hiding places--just the house, a stark structure standing alone in a bleak landscape, and Crowley couldn’t imagine Aziraphale here. He couldn’t imagine Aziraphale growing up here, Aziraphale as a _child_ here, Aziraphale coming home here, in a lonely place like this. Even the original house, some Georgian-style attempt from the 1950s, had no heart to it, no soul, but worse was the enormous glass and steel monstrosity that had been tacked onto the back, expanding out and above and beyond, like less of an afterthought than an attempt to overpower the traditional foundations. There were no lights on in any of the windows.

Crowley hated it, and he hated that Aziraphale was inside it, and he thought he’d probably hate whatever kind of man this Gabriel turned out to be.

The first raindrops were starting as Crowley knocked insistently on the front door, and for a moment he was afraid that the door would not open--that Aziraphale had seen that it was him, and said that he wasn’t to be let in--but it did, eventually. A tall woman with dark hair piled elaborately up on her head and a dispassionate expression looked down at him, one eyebrow arched disapprovingly when Crowley asked to see Aziraphale, but she lead. him into the house nonetheless, depositing him in the most sterile, pristine room he’d ever seen outside of a hospital to wait. Everything was white and clean and impersonal; Crowley sat gingerly in a white armchair, with the distinct impression that it had never been touched before. It reminded him, uncomfortably, of his own flat.

Then the door opened, and Aziraphale stepped inside.

His face was clean and his eyes clear, but there was something grey and watery about him too, something paper-thin that had never been there before. The silence stretched out between them as Aziraphale watched him for a moment, looking over him without looking directly at him. He had the same dispassionate expression as the tall woman who’d lead Crowley here, and Crowley grimaced as he recognised the family resemblance. He stood, hands aching to be full of Aziraphale, but Aziraphale would not meet his eyes, and Crowley’s fists curled in on themselves, empty.

“Madame Tracy told me you’d be here,” Crowley offered, when the silence began to drag on. “I’m not trying to--to harass you, or fight with you, or anything like that, I just thought that maybe it would help resolve things with your brother--she and I were talking about your parents, and the bookshop and the will, your mother’s will, and if it’s true--”

“It’s been sorted,” Aziraphale said, cutting him off. “The deal’s been finalised. I saw the signatures this morning.”

Crowley stared. “How is that _sorted?_ ”

Aziraphale shrugged, looking away to study the rain outside as it streaked down the windows. Outside, the snowy landscape was pockmarked and slushy underneath the growing downpour. “It’s in the best interests of the family,” he said, as if he were repeating something he’d learned by rote. “Our parents trusted Gabriel to make those decisions, and that’s the plan I have to follow.”

“Best interests of the family?” Crowley scoffed. “What about _your_ best interests? Look, Madame Tracy was telling me that you have a proprietary interest in the bookshop in your mother’s will. If that’s true, they can’t just sell it out from underneath you--you’d have rights to stop them--”

“What do _you_ care about my best interests?” Aziraphale asked, and Crowley supposed he’d earned that. “Are you going to say that’s what you were interested in this whole time? I’m afraid I won’t find that terribly believable, under the circumstances.”

“I’m not here for me,” Crowley told him, but he already knew that Aziraphale wouldn’t believe anything he said, not anymore. He could see it in the uncertain lines of Aziraphale’s mouth, in the shape of his eyes, the crease of his brows. He could see it in the way Aziraphale held himself back, in the way he held himself _braced_ , as if he expected anything Crowley might say would strike at him like a physical blow. He pushed the his glasses harder into the bridge of his nose and kept going anyway. “I know I can’t fix that. I came because I saw one last way to stop them from making this sale, to save your shop and the high street from them, and I thought you should know about it.”

Aziraphale shook his head, rubbing his hands together anxiously. “You keep saying _them,_ but they’re my _family_. I can’t fight my family. They’re not super-villains; they’re not bad guys.”

“They can be your family and still not have your best interests in mind,” Crowley said softly. “Just last night you were prepared to believe that I was plotting with one of them to sneak around you back, pretending at--at all that.” At the flirting, and the dating, and the kissing. At the falling in love. Crowley couldn’t bring himself to say that, not out loud, not with Aziraphale standing on the other side of the room, looking more and more like a cornered animal at every word. “And they didn’t tell you about the sale either, did they?”

“They were waiting for it to be finalised because they weren’t sure it would go through,” Aziraphale said, but he sounded more uncertain than he had before. The sound of the rain beating against the windows had reached a hard, insistent rhythm; Crowley could barely hear Aziraphale over it. “No reason to upset me, was there, if the sale didn’t happen?”

“And _I_ thought there was no reason to upset you if I could find a way to stop it, and that was _wrong_ of me.” But Crowley knew it was doing no good by the way Aziraphale was wringing his hands together; he was only making Aziraphale more agitated, and that was the last thing he wanted. He sighed, running a hand through his hair. “If I could turn back time, angel, I swear I’d tell you first thing. I’d tell you all the first day I came to Tadfield, but I didn’t _know_ and I messed up, all right? I know I messed up. So I have to be here instead, and I’m doing the last thing I can do to try to protect you.”

Crowley reached out, hoping beyond hope that Aziraphale would let him, and took Aziraphale’s wrist in his own, terribly gently, knowing it would be the last time, knowing he would never get this again: the warm imprint of Aziraphale’s skin against his, the answering pulse thundering alongside his. They’d started like this, with Aziraphale’s hand closed around Crowley’s wrist to protect him, and now Crowley was begging for Aziraphale to let him do the same.

“I’m not expecting forgiveness for the mistakes I’ve made,” he said, meeting Aziraphale’s gaze. “All I’m asking is that you read your mother’s will before you let this happen.”

Aziraphale looked back at him, and his eyes were wide and pale, wretched and hopeless. “I can’t fight my family,” he repeated.

“Then at least know what you’re giving up,” Crowley said, and he let Aziraphale go.

*

Crowley sat in the front seat of the Bentley for a long, long time.

They’d said their good-byes, stiff and formal, as two strangers do. Crowley had given Aziraphale a business card with his mobile written on the back, and then, as an afterthought, his home address--“Since you seem like the letter-writing sort,” he’d teased with a wink, because it was easier to make light of it than to drown in the weight of it, “Just in case you change your mind,”--and let him know that Madame Tracy had his jumper, and then pretended not to notice that Aziraphale’s voice had sounded thick and strained when he said, “Oh. Oh, quite right.”

Aziraphale had walked him back to the front door, and when Crowley was halfway down the front steps, he had asked, quite suddenly, “Why do this? You spent all that time with me; you say you tried to stop the sale. Why? Why come here today to help me, even though--”

 _Even though we fought_ , Crowley heard, even though he didn’t say it. _Even though I_ _’m sending you away._

Crowley had looked back at him, standing in the rain. “Isn’t it obvious?” he had asked, and it was easy to say, then, even though he’d known that he would hate himself for saying it later. “I fell in love. With Tadfield, sure. With this place, with all these people.”

Aziraphale had not moved. He had not answered. The rain on Crowley’s sunglasses had distorted the shape of him where he waited just inside the door, turning him into a ghost or a phantom--maybe there, and maybe not--and perhaps that was what made it so easy for Crowley to say, “And _you_ , angel. I fell in love with _you_. I just didn’t realise it until it was too late.”

And he’d gotten into the Bentley, and he’d waited, and waited, and waited. For something to happen; for anything to happen. For Aziraphale to come down from the house and slide into the passenger seat and say, _I forgive you_ , which would almost be enough, or for the tall, dispassionate woman to come back and tell him it was time for him to leave. For the rain to stop, or for the lightning to start; for the sun to peak through the clouds, or for Aziraphale to come and knock on his window and say it back. _I fell in love._

He waited a long time for something to happen, and nothing did.

Eventually he swiped at his eyes underneath the sunglasses, pulled up a map on his mobile, and started the long drive home.


	18. Making a List

Anthony J. Crowley hated a lot of things, and he was very good at it. He was so good at it, in fact, he even made a list.

There wasn’t much else to do on the drive back to London, and once Crowley got started on it, he couldn’t stop. Wet denims, country roads, the creeping headache you get after you’ve been crying, useless road signs: Crowley hated them. He hated holiday traffic, which apparently consisted of some ninety percent of Oxfordshire’s total population, and he hated the M25, which could make a traffic jam out of nothing more than three mid-sized sedans and a delivery van traveling together at speed, and he hated that it took so bloody long to get back to London and that when he got there, the city was alive with fairy lights and ribbons and garlands and music piped out of crisp, clean speakers. He hated greed, and apathy, and fraud, and he hated coldness and unfairness; he hated obligations and traditions that were used to cut down the people they were intended to protect, trust that was used like a free pass against those who had given it, and love that was used like a weapon against those who would raise their throats to it, desperate and full of hope-- _this time, maybe this time it would be different._

He hated that he had walked away.

He hated that he had left Aziraphale behind with nothing more to guard him than a memory of moonlight tainted with deceit, with nothing more than _I fell in love_ as a goodbye confession soaked in rain and guilt. He hated that he hadn’t said anything sooner, and that it probably wouldn’t have made much of a difference in the end; he hated that he hadn’t said _come with me,_ just one last time, and that it definitely wouldn’t have made a difference if he had.

He hated his flat. He hated the bare walls and the bare floors and the bare white leather sofa and the floor-to-ceiling windows, with their icy view of the storm rolling in over Mayfair. He hated that it was slick and modern and un-lived in; he hated that Aziraphale would have been just as uncomfortable here as he had been in that house, and that it didn’t matter because Aziraphale would never be here. He hated his bed, how big and empty it was, the way the silk sheets clung to his skin, and he hated his blackout curtains, and hated that he missed the lace.

He hated taking off his sunglasses and leaving them on the bedside table, remembering _what colour are they,_ whispered across a cool bathroom floor. 

He hated that Aziraphale had never asked to see them, even though he loved that, and that he had never had the courage to show them--that he had never had the courage to look Aziraphale in the eyes, clear and free, and known what colour Aziraphale’s eyes truly were. That he had never looked at Aziraphale, bared for all that he was, and said what he really meant.

_I love you, and I thought that would be a joyous thing. I love you, and for one night, it felt like a welcome home._

_Hate_ , he called it, because that was the easiest thing to call it--this bloody mess beneath his breastbone, this white-hot ache between his ribs, this knife in his throat and this sting in his eyes--but as he curled into his bed, pressing his hands to his mouth as if that could keep everything inside, he was beginning to suspect that wasn’t really what it was at all.

*

The rain hadn’t stopped by the time Crowley got up the next morning, and that was fine. He felt like it would probably rain forever.

He went down to the offices of Morningstar & Prince, where his keycard no longer worked. Security had to phone around to find someone to take him up, and finally a bright-eyed junior associate who’s name Crowley could only half-remember--Eric? Aaron? Juniors were a dime a dozen anyway--meandered down to escort Crowley through.

There weren’t a lot of personal effects in his office, but he took forever packing it all up into one box just to be annoying about it. He sent a couple emails to some long-standing clients, explaining that another solicitor from the firm would be taking their files on come the new year; he played a game or two of solitaire, just for old time’s sake. Eric stood in the doorway, watching him nervously, as if he weren’t sure whether he had the upper hand here or Crowley did.

“Is it true,” he asked eventually, shifting his weight, “that you sabotaged a client?”

“No,” Crowley said shortly. “Well, sort of. It didn’t take.”

“Isn’t it true, though, that you had an affair with someone on the other side?”

Crowley glared up at him. “No,” he said, because _affair_ implied something tawdry, something dirty, something quick and meaningless. _Affair_ implied something he ought to be ashamed of, and he wasn’t that. Never that.

Eric hummed. “Not what they’re saying downstairs.”

“Well, I’m sure downstairs would know all about it.”

“They say Dagon’s had to fly back early from Aruba to finish your job.”

Crowley’s stomach turned, a little. He liked Dagon well enough as a person--and he’d quite liked her for Beez, because she never seemed to take any of Beez’s shit, which Beez had plenty of--but she was a piranha at the negotiating table. Any remnants of Crowley’s protections for Tadfield that had made it to the final draft of the sales contracts would be sliced clean through. “Bully for Dagon.”

Eric shifted his weight again. He wasn’t _actually_ enjoying this, Crowley didn’t think; it was more like he couldn’t stop himself, like he were looking at Crowley and reminding himself to stay on the straight and narrow. “What are you going to do now? Beez is pissed; you’ll not be getting a recommendation for any other firms in London. They’ll have you blacklisted. Affair with the other side of the table? You’ll be lucky to ever work again. You’ll be down in the dirt.” 

“Then I guess,” Crowley said through his teeth, shutting his computer down and picking up his box of things, “I’ll have to go become someone’s damned gardener, won’t I? Better finding flowers in the dirt than sitting around here and nannying you lot into doing the right thing.”

Eric followed him down to the lift and swiped him out. Crowley stepped on and pushed the button for the first floor, but Eric stuck his foot in front of the doors, stopping it from closing. “You still think you did the right thing?” he asked. “Even like this?”

Crowley looked at him, _really_ looked at him, and saw something familiar there: some doubt in the system, that niggling suspicion that he wasn’t where he ought to be. For years, Crowley had dismissed that feeling as exhaustion and exasperation, as a distaste for clients who couldn’t, or _wouldn’t,_ look beyond the ends of their own noses, but he knew now that it was deeper, wrapped around his bones, and that if he ever lost it--if he ever well and truly lost it, and couldn’t get it back--he’d cease to be any kind of person he’d ever want to be.

“Yeah,” he told Eric evenly, without hesitation. “I gave a voice to people who didn’t even know that others were talking. I remembered that there were _people_ in that village, real, living people, with real, actual lives. This isn’t some esoteric philosophical debate about whether what we’re doing is legal, or whether it’s going to leave us all in the eighth circle of Hell, covered in boiling pitch. This is reality, and real people have to live with it, and I’d face down Satan himself to give these people a chance if that’s what it took.”

Eric blinked. “But-- _why?_ ” 

Crowley shifted his box onto one hip, nudging Eric’s foot out of the lift door. “Love. You can feel free to tell that to the arseholes downstairs. Bit twee, I know, but it’s just love. It’s up to you to decide if that’s a price worth paying.”

“So you got them, then? This love, this person worth ending your career over, you got them?”

“No,” Crowley said as the doors closed. “It was worth it anyway.”

*

He took the long way home, just because he could. Drove round to Trafalgar Square and then up to Picadilly, Christmas displays strewn every which way, the air above him thick with soaring angels, then all the way down Regent’s Street to see the lights curtaining across Oxford Street, thick with dazzling stars and brilliant orbs, as if the galaxies themselves had been drawn over the city like a blanket.

Crowley’d always hated Christmas. It had seemed so false, so _trite;_ so driven by competition and capitalism and all the things that didn’t matter in the world and so few of the things that did--love, and forgiveness, and hope. A star in the dark of the winter’s night, guiding him out of the storm and into the light. A hand to hold in the cold, leading him into the warmth of home.

Traffic was abysmal, of course, and it took him ages to navigate Mayfair back around to his flat. Took him ages to find a parking spot--he really _did_ hate parking in London--and when he did, it was several blocks down, and he had to walk back carrying his things from the office, which seemed a lot heavier than they had when he’d been packing them up.

He rounded the corner of his building to go in the entrance, though, and nearly dropped all of it.

Aziraphale was there.

Sitting on a bench just outside the front entry, the glow of a street lamp streaming over him as if Heaven itself had opened above him, twisting his signet ring nervously and waiting for Crowley, an ethereal mirage shifting into the corporeal--he was there. 

“Aziraphale,” Crowley breathed.

He looked up, startled, and saw Crowley standing there just outside the circle of light, and then Aziraphale smiled. It was a small, precarious thing, but he smiled, he _smiled_ , and Crowley couldn’t breathe and Crowley couldn’t think because Aziraphale was there, waving a little awkwardly, tense with nerves and uncertainty but he was there, and he hadn’t smiled the last time Crowley had seen him, had he? He hadn’t smiled in that house as he told Crowley it was too late; he hadn’t smiled as he’d listened to Crowley say he was in love and watched him walk away. He hadn’t smiled.

“Hello,” Aziraphale said, standing from the bench, taking a hesitant step forward. “I hope you don’t mind terribly--you did give me your address, though, and I’m afraid I’ve rather made a mess of things. I just got a bit lost for a moment, I think. Didn’t know where I stood. Wasn’t really standing anywhere, I suppose.”

“Yeah?” Crowley swallowed hard, clutching his box of things closer to his chest. “Did you sort it out? Where you stood?”

Aziraphale took another step forward. “I think so,” he said softly, and he reached out, sliding his fingertips over Crowley’s wrist, giving him a second to pull away before settling his palm over his skin. He was warm--so warm. He was always so warm.

“I’m right here,” Aziraphale said, looking up at him. “If you’ll still have me. I’d like to be right here.” 


	19. Cheesy Movies

Aziraphale was in Crowley’s flat. 

In the lounge, specifically. Talking to Crowley’s plants, murmuring so low that Crowley couldn’t really hear what was being said and stroking along the glossy leaves with those hands that had been so warm on Crowley’s wrist. Standing in the low light of the single lamp and looking out the enormous windows as a fog settled over London in the wake of the rain, he was a pale beacon fixed against the encroaching night, otherworldly and yet so tangible, so touchable, so _real._

“I’m right here,” he’d said, so soft and so careful, looking up at Crowley. “If you’ll still have me. I’d like to be right here.”

Right here, and yet somehow still so far away.

Crowley himself was in the kitchen, watching Aziraphale in stolen glances from around the corner, trying not to panic and doing rather a poor job of it, because Aziraphale had looked up at him in the lamplight outside and he, absolute genius extraordinaire that he was, had only blinked back, and said, “ _Oh._ ”

Well, what was he _supposed_ to say? _Yes, of course, you numpty, I’ll still have you every day of my life? Yes, obviously, I’ll still have you even if you leave and leave and leave, I’ll still have you every time you come back, I’ll still have you if I had to wait six thousand bloody years?_ _I’ll still have you if the world is ending and I’ll still have you if it isn’t, because it’s not about me having you, not really, not at all--it’s about you having me, and you have me, angel, Aziraphale, you have me, you’ll have me until it all falls apart._

That was all _true_ , of course, but it was a bit much for a lamplight confession on the pavement in front of Crowley’s building, and anyway Crowley wasn’t sure whether Aziraphale would actually want to hear any of that-- _right here_ could mean so many things, after all, and not all of them meant _I love you too._ And Crowley had already made his confession once, and heard nothing but silence and the sound of the rain, and he wasn’t particularly keen on reliving the experience. 

So instead Crowley had just said, “Oh,” and when he’d finally gotten his breath back, he’d added, “Would you like to come up?”

He’d shown Aziraphale into the lounge, where Aziraphale had hummed, taking in the bare floors and bare walls and empty shelves, and said, “It’s, er, nice,” in that prim, trying-not-to-be-judgmental voice he had sometimes, and Crowley had laughed, half-hysterical already, and answered, “No, it’s not really,” and Aziraphale had laughed too, a little, and then Crowley had had to escape with the ready excuse of offering a drink before he did something ridiculous, like have a heart attack, or possibly kiss Aziraphale senseless.

 _Get it together,_ Crowley told himself sternly, and he wiped his palms on his denims and got to work finding a bottle of wine.

*

“Anything I can help with?” Aziraphale said.

Crowley startled, jumping in his place in front of the open refrigerator, and then immediately pretending he hadn’t. “Sorry,” he said, sweeping the fridge door shut again, conceding defeat to its empty shelves. “I haven’t got anything in for nibbles--haven’t had time to run out yet.” He nodded at the two wine glasses set out on the worktop instead. “Cabernet sauvignon, though, if you’re interested.”

“This is fine,” Aziraphale reassured, stepping into the little galley kitchen and claiming a glass. “More than.” 

He settled with his back against the worktop opposite Crowley, and suddenly the kitchen felt like it was much tinier than it had ever been before; Crowley studied their feet, practically stacked together on the tile, and wondered what it would be like to cook with him, in a kitchen like this--like a dance, probably, or else a disaster. He could not think of a single blessed thing to say. 

Crowley hated it: this cold, isolating silence, these long moments stretching out and out and out as if they were two perfect strangers, as if they’d never walked hand-in-hand and laughed together. As if they had never held one another; as if they had never tasted happiness from one another’s lips. As if Crowley had never fallen in love--as if Aziraphale had never reached out and caught him. It was Crowley’s own fault and he knew it; it had been crafted his own two hands and his own collection of lies and half-truths. That was why he hated it so much.

Aziraphale noticed, of course, and his tentative little smile faded a little. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah, ‘course,” Crowley blustered, because if Aziraphale wasn’t going to point it out, neither was he. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You seem a bit spooked,” Aziraphale said, apologetically, and he stood straight, as if to go. “I’m sorry, I--I should’ve called before I came. I can come back tomorrow, if that’s better, or if you--”

The awkwardness of it was bad, but the idea of Aziraphale leaving was _worse_. “No, no no, it’s fine,” Crowley said quickly, his stomach floating up between his ribs. “It’s fine, I was just--I like being spooked, even. Big spooky fan, me.” He took a huge gulp of his wine to stop himself from being any more ridiculous than he already was, and tried for a deep breath after that, too, and something to say. “I’m just--I didn’t expect to see you again. Ever, really.”

“I didn’t expect you to either, when you left,” Aziraphale admitted, but he settled back against the worktop again, sipping at his wine. “But you left and I thought, _there he goes, out of my life forever,_ and I stood there for the longest time just . . . _waiting._ Waiting to be relieved, or to be satisfied, and I wasn’t. It was just--awful, really. Just awful.” He looked back up at Crowley and offered another apologetic smile, and Crowley couldn’t help but to offer one back.

“And then this morning,” Aziraphale went on, “I went to see Gabriel. About everything, about the--the big plans for the company, for Sanctus, and all these _best interests_ everyone was going on about. And you were right, about them,” his voice turned creaky and strained, “and about me. They hadn’t really thought about me at all, about what would happen to me. I was--foolish, I suppose, to think otherwise.”

Aziraphale’s smile trembled now, full of shame and self-deprecation, and it made Crowley want to wrap his arms around him, made him want to hold Aziraphale until the sun rose again and took this storm with it. 

He settled for crossing to the other side of the galley, and slowly he put his hand over Aziraphale’s on the worktop, giving it a gentle squeeze. “It’s not foolish to hope,” Crowley said. “To have faith in something, or someone. To believe in something. To believe that there’s good out there in the world. Even when they let you down, that’s on them, not you. It’s not foolish to have hope, angel.”

That’s what Aziraphale had taught _him,_ after all, and Tadfield too--that there were people out there who loved, and loved freely; that there were places you could go that would make you a cup of tea and give you a hand to hang on to; that sometimes people came together to play and to keep each other safe; that sometimes people came together to sing and to keep each other warm; and sometimes they came together to fight and to protect and to see things through to the bitter end, even if they lost.

That some things were worth it, even when you lost.

“I know,” Aziraphale said. “That’s why I _had_ to come. We need your help, Crowley. You’re the only one who knows what went on in the negotiations--you’re the only one we have left to turn to, and--”

 _Oh_ , Crowley thought, and there it was: losing.

The hope that had sprung in Crowley’s own chest took a step back, and shriveled under the weight of Aziraphale’s words: he _had to_ come, Crowley was the _only one_ \--as if Aziraphale were here unwillingly, in dramatic sacrifice for Tadfield, bringing in an old demon to fight the new.

Not a choice, but just the last resort. The doomsday option.

All right, he was being dramatic, he told himself, and he quickly tried to pull himself together. So _what_ if Aziraphale were only here for help, rather than for Crowley himself? He’d still come. So _what_ if he _had_ to, rather than wanted to? He still trusted Crowley, still believed in him, and that something, wasn’t it? _Right here, if you’ll still have me_ \--if you’ll still _help_ me, is what he’d meant, and of course, _of course,_ Crowley would.

Christ, he was just glad he hadn’t said any of the dozens of things he’d thought of in response. Talk about awkward.

Aziraphale hadn’t turned his hand over, under Crowley’s. Hadn’t accepted it back--had only left his hand in place, enduring it. Carefully, Crowley took his hand away, and busied it with pouring more wine as he tuned back in to what Aziraphale was saying. If he’d noticed Crowley’s flash of disappointment, he didn’t say so; he was still going full-throttle about the sale.

“--and the closing is tomorrow, so we really haven’t got much time.”

“Tomorrow?” Crowley said, stopping mid-pour. “It wasn’t supposed to be until after the first of the year.”

“I know, but apparently Gabriel insisted it be moved up. Said he didn’t want to run the risk of anyone else trying to disrupt it.” Aziraphale gave him a bit of a smug, approving sort of look that said, _anyone like you,_ which then melted into a pleading sort of look that said, _please let it be exactly you._ He turned to face Crowley fully, taking the bottle out of Crowley’s hand to set it gently back on the worktop, and for a moment Crowley thought he was going to take his hand back-- _please, take my hand, it’s yours_ \--but in the end he just folded his own in front of him.

“Help us find a way to stop it,” he begged. “You said something about the will--I don’t--I haven’t got a copy of it, but I thought maybe you’d know where to look, and if you had a look at it and you were _right_ \--”

“Yeah, of course,” Crowley promised immediately, because _obviously_. “Of course I will, yeah? We’re in it together, here on out.”

Aziraphale smiled, then. Not a small, hesitant thing; not a timid, rickety thing. He smiled _that_ smile, the bright, brilliant, beaming one, the one that made him light up like the sun, his eyes big and so full of hope, scorching Crowley down to the soul settled in his very chest.

“Come on,” Crowley muttered, abandoning his wine glass and rummaging for his keys, before he did something really ridiculous and probably _remarkably_ stupid. “Let’s go--let’s go save the town.”

Aziraphale laughed, clear as a bell. “Let’s go save the town,” he repeated. “Just like in one of those old cheesy movies?”

Crowley gritted his teeth and smiled back. “Just like one of those old cheesy movies.”

*

Having Aziraphale in the flat had been one thing--uncomfortable and intimidating, raising Crowley’s self-consciousness to the surface like an itch just underneath the skin--having him in the Bentley was something else entirely, and it went a long way toward calming the prickling, brittle thing that had been growing in Crowley’s chest. This was where Crowley was the most comfortable, the most at _home_ , and Aziraphale’s intrusion was metered by the speed of the Bentley as she swept along, by the appreciation Aziraphale oozed for her. 

“Oh, she’s _gorgeous_ ,” Aziraphale had exclaimed, as Crowley’d opened the passenger door for him and let him slip inside. “Crowley, she’s magnificent.”

Crowley had flushed, too pleased to say anything that wouldn’t make him sound like a complete disaster, and had tried not to stare as Aziraphale trailed his fingertips along the sweep line of the dash, full of adoration. The tips of his ears had, embarrassingly, gone quite pink--he’d felt them burn, and had to hope Aziraphale wouldn’t notice in the dark as they sped out of London.

By the time they’d hit the M25, the awkward silences had begun to dissipate, and Aziraphale had settled quite comfortably into updating Crowley on everything he’d missed in Tadfield over the last two days--Anathema was looking for an old contract that one of her grandparents signed with the one of Aziraphale’s grandparents, which she insisted was because her great-great gran had prophesied that this day would come--Newt had gone round collecting signatures for a protest, which had prompted Gabriel to receive some dozen or so angry phone calls from some of the more opinionated community members, not that Aziraphale expected it would help--Shadwell had stopped lurking in the streets once Crowley had gone, ostensibly because it had gotten too cold, but more likely because Madame Tracy had bribed him with a promise of Sunday night dinner if he’d help her start packing up in the Inn--

“Oh!” Aziraphale said, eyes going wide, diving down by his feet for the leather satchel he’d brought with him. He rummaged around inside it for a moment. “I can’t _believe_ I forgot--I meant to do this straight-away-- _ah-ha!_ ”

And then he straightened up again, now holding up something soft and white in his hands: a jumper.

 _The_ jumper, the one he’d given Crowley--the one Crowley had left behind. The jumper the colour of parchment, with the thick cable-knit pattern worn soft with age and use, the one that had held Crowley close in Aziraphale’s scent and warmth, deep and heavy and soothing. The sight of it felt like a fire catching in Crowley’s chest.

“You left this,” Aziraphale was saying. “But it’s--it was _for_ you, I was giving it to you. I want you to have it, to know that you’re always--”

“You don’t have to do that,” Crowley said mechanically, around what tasted like a mouthful of ash. He looked hard at the M25 stretched out in front of them, feeling like he’d rather drive into a wall of flame than finish what he had to say, but it needed to be said. “You know I don’t--I know things aren’t what you expected, when you gave me that. I don’t--I’m not holding you to anything, you know, I don’t expect--”

Aziraphale reached out, and put a hand on Crowley’s wrist again, just beneath the steering wheel, this familiar touch they were somehow drawn into again and again, as if destined to repeat over and over. The rest of the words died in Crowley’s throat; he briefly considered just spontaneously combusting.

“You told me once,” Aziraphale said, very quietly and very seriously, more seriously than Crowley had ever heard him, maybe, as if he were right here, right now, making some kind of vow, “that you’d want me to expect _everything._ That you’d make _any_ promise. And I said then that I would too.”

Crowley shook his head, trying not to drown in the memory of it, of Aziraphale pressed so close, of Aziraphale’s hands and Aziraphale’s mouth and Aziraphale’s _everything_. “So much has changed,” he said thickly. “That’s--that was a _lifetime_ ago—”

“That was _three days ago_ ,” Aziraphale said. “I know it was a quick falling in, but I’m not half so quick about falling _out_ of love, and believe me, there was a day in there somewhere that I really wished I was, actually. But it gave me the time to think about it, to really think about it.” He squeezed Crowley’s wrist again, as if he knew that Crowley’s heart had stopped and he was reminding it to have a pulse. “I would walk away from _Heaven_ to be where you are, Crowley. I love you.”

Crowley--

Crowley--can’t.

He pulled the Bentley over to the side of the M25 and shut it off, and then he sighed, hard and shaky, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. “Are you serious?” he asked. He would have sounded incredulous had it not been for the fist in his throat.

Aziraphale pulled his hand back as if burnt, and that was fine because Crowley was on fire, the whole _Bentley_ was on fire, burning them both up like a meteor entering the atmosphere, like a dying sun falling in on itself. “Yes,” Aziraphale said, half-defensive, half-concerned. “I _love_ you.”

“You’re really serious?” Crowley asked again, peeling his fingers off the wheel one by one, shoving them up underneath the lenses of his sunglasses to press into his eyes. “After all this? After--everything I _did_ \--how could you _still_ \--” His mouth worked, trying to find the next words, but none were there.

Instead he reached up, and took his sunglasses off.

Aziraphale made a stunned noise next to him, a whimper or a protest, Crowley wasn’t sure. “Oh, _Crowley,_ ” he breathed. “You--you don’t have to do that, darling, you don’t _owe_ me that, or anybody--”

“The thing about the sunglasses,” Crowley said over him, staring down at them in his hands, adjusting to the low light of the M25 at night, even with nothing but the Bentley’s headlights to illuminate the cab of the car, and his hands were shaking, trembling so hard they threatened to tear the delicate frames apart, “is that they hide both ways. You can’t see me, in them, but I can’t see you either. And I told myself, I promised myself, if I ever got the chance again, I’d look at you. Clear and free, I’d _look at you,_ with everything that I am, and see you for everything that you are too. I want to _see_ you.”

There was a long silence in which the world was destroyed and remade again, as softly as a whisper. In which flowers bloomed and apples ripened, and both withered, beautiful and poisonous; in which the floodwaters rose and receded, powerful and destructive. It was the longest silence that had ever been endured, the silence of a question asked, waiting to be answered--the silence between one heartbeat, and the next.

Aziraphale said, “So look at me.”

Crowley looked.

There was another silence, not half so long as the last one and yet still not long enough. Aziraphale was pale in the dark, but his eyes were wide and his mouth was soft and he looked at Crowley as if Crowley were the only thing that existed in all the world. He looked at Crowley. He looked at Crowley, and he did not look away.

Aziraphale reached out, so slowly, to the side of Crowley’s face--fingertips, first, then the warmth of his palm, and then his thumb stroking a path just under one of Crowley’s eyes as he looked and looked and _looked_.

“Amber,” Aziraphale said finally, his voice full of awe and wonder, tilting gently into a smile. “Just like you said. Like stardust.”

Crowley kissed him.

Crowley _kissed_ him, couldn’t not be kissing him, couldn’t not be touching him, and Aziraphale gasped and grasped and pulled, pressing in, pulling forward, reaching and holding and wanting and Crowley _kissed_ him, every apology he’d ever known how to pronounce laying into the curve of Aziraphale’s mouth, every confession he’d never known how to say falling into the sweep of Aziraphale’s tongue, everything he’d ever been and everything he’d ever thought he’d be pouring into Aziraphale’s hold, giving him all of it, and Aziraphale held it all, took it all, kissed Crowley back as if he could taste the very heart of him, as if he could hear the very soul of him and wanted to call back--Aziraphale kissed him as if desperate that Crowley should _know,_ that Crowley should _understand_ , and Crowley did, he _did_ , with Aziraphale’s hands holding his face as if he were _precious_ , with Aziraphale’s mouth moving against his as if in _prayer_ , and Crowley had thought he was alone, he’d thought he was so alone, but Aziraphale kissed him as if he’d been _found_ and this--this was _together._

This was together. 

“I love you,” Aziraphale repeated, when he finally pulled away, pressing his forehead hard into Crowley’s, the both of them trying to catch their breath. “I can _see you_ , Crowley, and I _love_ you.”

Crowley swallowed, and swallowed, and swallowed, and Aziraphale was _right here_ and he was holding Crowley to him and he was never going to let go and Crowley knew it, Crowley believed it. 

“Yeah,” he finally managed. “I love you too,” and Aziraphale kissed him again.

*

“We’d better get going,” Aziraphale said eventually, looking exhausted and happy and completely, thoroughly kissed. It was a good look on him, Crowley thought. It was a look he should wear much, much more often.

The Bentley, patient as always, flared back to life at Crowley’s touch. “One more for the road?” Crowley asked, a little smugly, and Aziraphale laughed and obliged, slow and sweet.

Crowley maneuvered the Bentley back onto the M25, getting his bearings back, and then Aziraphale said, “Oh look,” pointing up into the night sky. A bright, white star shone down, a diamond in the scattered sky. “That’s almost right over Tadfield, I think.”

“Beautiful,” Crowley agreed, watching the curl of Aziraphale’s grin. His eyes were blue, in the light of the star: pale and clear and so, so blue. “Almost like a beacon, isn’t it?” 

“Like the Christmas star.” Aziraphale’s hand found Crowley’s, holding fast. “Guiding us home.” 


	20. Ghosts of Christmas Past

It was snowing by the time they made it back to Tadfield, capturing the high street in the hush like it were inside a snow globe: pristine and still, a moment captured in time. The swooping garlands and red ribbons on the windows seemed fresher and brighter than Crowley remembered, the soft glow of the fairy lights more magical; the crackling, tinny sounds of the ancient speakers piping old carols into the air seemed cosier, somehow, more domestic. 

The familiarity of it settled like a sip of good hot tea in Crowley’s belly, warm and comforting. _Welcome home._

“All right,” Crowley said as he parked the Bentley, giddy with adrenalin now that they were finally here. He hopped out, his sunglasses tucked into the collar of his shirt and Aziraphale’s jumper tossed over one shoulder, and followed Aziraphale to the front door of the bookshop, where Aziraphale was fumbling with the keys. He could feel himself shifting, his mind racing, picking up thoughts and discarding them just as quickly-- _the will, the inheritance, property rights, transfer of property, ownership interests, conflicts of interest._ “Now, I’ve got some ideas about where to get started, but we’ll need to work fast-- _mmph!_ ”

Aziraphale had got the door open and stumbled inside, pulling Crowley in after him, pulling Crowley flush against him, pulling him right into a kiss. Crowley melted into it, grabbing onto Aziraphale’s lapels to pull him closer, tasting the mischievous smile at the corners of Aziraphale’s mouth.

“Sorry,” Aziraphale said against Crowley’s lips, not sounding very sorry at all, and Crowley’s laugh disappeared into another kiss. Aziraphale wrapped an arm around his waist, steadying him, skating a palm up his side. “Been wanting to do that.”

“What,” Crowley asked, still giggling, between another kiss, and another, one of his hands finding the soft hair at the nape of Aziraphale’s neck, the other fisting itself into his coat, hanging on, “since we hit Slough?”

“Mm. Since I saw you standing there in the street light outside your building, I should think.” Aziraphale tilted, kissing him a little bit harder, a little bit deeper, and Crowley’s giggles gave way to a groan, his hands tightening on Aziraphale’s shoulder, his neck, his lapels. It was bloody intoxicating, to kiss Aziraphale like this: without secrets, without masks, without hiding away and feeling guilty and wondering whether he would get to keep him. What secrets he had left--where he liked to be touched, and how, or what his favourite songs were, and why, or where to find the best wood-fired pizza in all of London, and what time to order--were Aziraphale’s to discover, and Aziraphale’s were his, and it was open and it was free and it was curious and it was adventurous and it was--

“ _Ahem_ ,” a voice said from somewhere behind them, interrupting. “Evening, gentlemen.”

Crowley jumped back, startled, ducking his head immediately to the palm of one hand-- _his glasses, where were his glasses_ \--but Aziraphale followed after him the instant after, one hand on his shoulder, the other gently unhooking Crowley’s sunglasses from the collar of his shirt and handing them to him without a word before turning to the door.

“Anathema,” he said brightly, as if he’d been doing absolutely nothing out of the ordinary, and certainly not snogging a lately-disgraced solicitor in the dark just inside the door. “Whatever are you doing up so late?”

“Saw the car,” she said. Crowley fixed his glasses to his face, blinking as the world got darker again, and turned round to look. She had her arms crossed over her chest, pulling a furry looking bathrobe closed over a ratty pair of pyjama bottoms and a grey t-shirt that probably had been Newt’s at one point. “Bit distinctive, don’t you think?”

“It’s all right,” Crowley told her, grinning just because he knew that would irritate her. “I was invited.”

“Er, he rather was,” Aziraphale said, when Anathema opened her mouth to protest. “Now let’s all just. Head inside, I think, and I’ll put the kettle on, and we can go from there. Are we expecting Newt to join?” 

Anathema’s mouth clicked closed. She looked from Crowley to Aziraphale, Aziraphale to Crowley, and then dropped her hands, like she was giving up. “All right,” she said, bustling past them to lead the way into the shop. “Yeah, I’ll call him to come round, just leave the door unlocked.”

“I am actually sorry about that,” Aziraphale said to Crowley, once she’d turned the first winding corner into the maze of books. “Bit protective, I think.” 

“S’fine, angel,” Crowley said, and he meant it. “It’s--good, I think. To know that there are people looking out for you, besides me. It’s good.”

Aziraphale smiled, he smiled and smiled, and then he held out his hand, and led Crowley carefully into the dark.

*

Anathema hadn’t been able to find a copy of the contract her great-grandparents had signed, which was something of a blow. “I know they did it,” she insisted stubbornly, taking a long gulp of her tea. She had warmed up quite a bit from her rather cold entrance, after a heated, whispered conversation in the stacks with Aziraphale while Crowley busied himself making tea in the backroom. When they’d come back, Anathema had given him a short, approving nod, and Aziraphale had beamed. “My Nan used to talk about it all the time--she was awfully proud of having pulled one over on the Sanctus Corp. _To protect us in thin times_ , she used to say. If only I could just--find it!!” 

Newt, who’d arrived not long after Anathema had, reached across took her tea cup from her and set it back down on Aziraphale’s coffee table, like he was afraid she might break it. Crowley privately thought that Newt had the right idea.

“So we need to look somewhere else there are records,” Crowley said. “Now, obviously, wills and deeds, titles, all that sort of stuff is public record, but it’ll involve the records office and a hefty fee to find it on short notice, _if_ we’re lucky enough that it hasn’t all been sent off-site for storage--they do a lot of that these days. Closest records office is in--?” He looked to Aziraphale.

“Abingdon. Not terribly far.”

“And they probably open at 9 o’clock, so Newt, we’ll send you up, if that’s all right, just in case they do have it.” Newt nodded, rummaging around the detritus on Aziraphale’s table for a pen. He wrote _Abingdon_ on the palm of his hand, which was not the most encouraging thing Crowley’d ever seen someone do, but he elected to ignore it for now. “Now we--” he gestured between himself, Aziraphale, and Anathema-- “need to think of other places a will, a contract, or a deed might’ve been kept by Azirpahale’s parents.”

“Heaven’s Pointe?” Anathema suggested instantly.

Aziraphale shook his head. “I went through the library there, but almost all of those books and records are _here_ , in the shop. Most of what was left was Sandalphon’s Margaret Thatcher collection.” He shuddered. “The rest of the papers would’ve been in Gabriel’s office--used to be my mother’s. Probably under lock and key. No good.”

“Did your parents have a local solicitor?” Crowley asked. “The solicitor who would’ve drawn up the will?”

“Oh, very probably, but I’ve no idea who it was, I’m afraid. Gabriel’s with some new firm--”

“Duke & Duke,” Crowley supplied, “Very nasty--”

“And I wasn’t involved much, by the time my mother died.”

Crowley sat back in his seat, thinking, and Newt took advantage of the break in the conversation to gather up the tea cups for another round. The old solicitor was out, unless Aziraphale suddenly had an epiphany. Newt was unlikely to actually get anywhere with the records offices up in Abingdon, given this short notice. “Anywhere else in the house your mum spent a lot of time, besides her office?”

“Mm. I wasn’t around much, those last years,” Aziraphale said, a little delicately, and Crowley slid a hand across the sofa to his leg, just resting-- _I’ve got you now_ , he meant, and he thought Aziraphale heard it, because Aziraphale laid his own hand over Crowley’s and kept it there. “Before I was gone, she was always in the library with me, but once I left--I mean, she gave me most of what was in there. I can’t imagine where she’d have spent her time after that.”

“She liked the library?” Crowley perked up. “More than her office?”

Aziraphale nodded, taking his tea cup back from Newt, who handed one to Crowley as well. It smelled like there was a shot of bourbon in it too, this time--good lad, Crowley thought, shooting him a grin. “She was always in there,” he said, taking a sip, looking down at his cup, and taking another, bigger sip. “Reading, writing, looking over whatever bits of paper. Said it was the only place in the house she could find any quiet.”

Crowley glanced over at Aziraphale a moment, then caught his thoughts, pausing to really _watch_ him. His shoulders had slumped minutely; his head had bowed. His hand in Crowley’s had gone a little listless, as if it had forgotten itself, and then Aziraphale lifted it away.

“All right,” Crowley said, his gaze lingering on Aziraphale a little longer, then turning back to Newt and Anathema. “Here’s what we do. Newt, tomorrow you go up to Abingdon, I’ll email you the list of records to ask for. Anathema, you’re going to make some phone calls. Every solicitor in Oxfordshire, starting with the listings here in Tadfield--see if you can’t find who drew up the will.” They both nodded. “Aziraphale and I are going to stay here and start going through the collection.”

“The collection?” Aziraphale asked, brow furrowed. 

“Yep,” Crowley said. He set his tea back down, then reached and took one of Aziraphale’s hands in both of his. “Angel, if your mother was really so invested in the library--more so than the office at home--there’s a chance that she’d have left a copy of the will somewhere in her books, which might have been brought here when everything was moved. If that’s the case, it’s just a matter of finding it.”

Aziraphale shook his head. “No, I know the books,” he said. “I’d know if something were there.” 

“Are you sure?” Crowley asked quietly, suspecting the answer. “You’ve been through every single one? There’s no set of books that you’ve ever dismissed, or maybe avoided? Books you think of as _hers?_ If I had my parents’ library, I’d have books like that.”

There was a long pause as Aziraphale thought, staring deep into his tea cup as if it held the answers. Judging by the look on his face, he already knew exactly which books Crowley would be looking for, but the slump of his shoulders only deepened and the line of his mouth turned further downward.

Anathema cleared her throat and stood from her seat. “Listen, it’s late,” she said. “Newt and I are going to call it a night, I think, and we’ll check in tomorrow?”

Thankful, Crowley stood, getting Anathema’s email address instead of Newt’s at Newt’s own insistence, busying away the tea cups, murmuring to Newt about where he’d got the bourbon from. At the doorway to the back room, Anathema gave Crowley a hug, complete with a fiercely whispered instruction to “Please take care of him,” and Newt shook Crowley’s hand, repeating “Abingdon, Abingdon. Got it, Abingdon.”

Aziraphale had followed them to the doorway as well, though his goodbyes were distracted and he didn’t offer to see them to the front door. “Mind how you go,” he called after them, and he and Crowley waited there until they heard the front door close, miles away on the other side of the stacks. Then he turned to Crowley.

“I know where we can start looking,” he said.

*

It was a small, dusty collection in one of the shop’s back corners, and it looked like it had never been touched.

“My father passed when I was very young, but my mother died some fifteen years ago,” Aziraphale said, pulling another lamp into the space so they could see everything. “And I had these books probably, oh. Ten, twelve years before that.”

“You were quite young, then.”

“Just past twenty, I think. I had been home from uni--oh, one summer, maybe two? One evening she called me in to the library and asked to speak with me.” He reached out, picking a book from one of the shelves: a thick, leather-bound book. “She said she knew I didn’t have any interest in Sanctus--which was true, of course--and asked what she could do for me instead. No point in giving part of the company to someone who didn’t want anything to do with it, but I clearly wasn’t doing much with my degree either. I read history, you know. She thought I ought to have gone on to be a professor.”

Aziraphale trailed off, opening the book and running his fingertips over the page inside. Underneath the dust, there was gold foil lettering stamped into the cover: _Holy Bible_.

“Your heart wasn’t in it,” Crowley supplied, when Aziraphale seemed like he wasn’t going to continue. “Research would’ve been fine for you, I think, but not teaching.”

“No,” Aziraphale agreed. “It wasn’t for me. She was so disappointed. If I couldn’t keep up with the rest of us kids, I should have at least been respectable at something, you know. But no, I told her I wanted a bookshop. To collect books: rare and unusual copies, antiques, first editions, misprints, that sort of thing. And I do restorations, now, and appraisals sometimes, and that’s been great fun. That’s been enough, for me. To know the books, to keep them and protect them. Make sure they lasted. Wasn’t enough for her, though--she only gave me this set when she was on her deathbed.”

He set the book down on a table nearby, and hefted the lamp closer, shining the light up upon the spines. Leather-bound, gold-foiled titles shone back, one after the other, some faded, some less. Some of the leather was in disrepair, flaking away from the book glue inside; some of it was thick and rich, even under the dust. 

They were all Bibles.

“She collected them,” Aziraphale said, looking over the Bibles, his eyes somewhere far away, in some long-forgotten library, on some long-ago winter’s night. “Not even because she was particularly religious--lapsed Catholics, the lot of us, really--but because she just liked them. The history of it, she said. That these books mattered to people, so deeply, and then they came to her to be kept safe. When I was little, I thought those people were all still in their books, and that’s why I wasn’t allowed to touch them. Because the books were filled with ghosts.”

Crowley put a hand to Aziraphale’s shoulder, rubbing in a gentle circle. “There aren’t any ghosts here,” he said gently. “Not those people, and not your mother, either.”

Aziraphale looked up at him, trying to smile, but the whole thing was too tremulous, threatening to break like a ship against rock. “I know,” he said, his voice cracking. “It’s just--you go your whole life thinking, oh, who needs her? Terrible parent, really. Trying to convince yourself that if she can’t love me, that’s her problem, that she’s the one missing out, that she’s the one in the wrong, to want you to be anything other than what you are. But there’s always that little voice that sounds like her, asking if that’s true. If you couldn’t have tried a little bit harder, been a little bit better.” 

_Sod this_ , Crowley thought, and he took the lamp from Aziraphale’s hand, setting it on the floor, and gathered him up into his arms. Aziraphale was stiff for one moment, then two, and then he collapsed like a puppet cut from his strings, burying his face into Crowley’s chest, and Crowley wondered when the last time was that Aziraphale had been held like this: loved and protected and wanted. _I will always hold you like this,_ he promised, pressing a kiss to Aziraphale’s temple. _I will hold you like this until the end of time._

“That little voice is wrong,” Crowley said firmly, breathing into Aziraphale’s hair, holding him and holding him. He could feel Aziraphale’s breath against his chest, stuttering hot through his shirt. “You’re _enough_ , Aziraphale. You’re enough, you’re enough. That you _exist_ is enough, and you’re clever and funny and kind, and you have this whole community around you that you’re apart of, that cares about you, and on top of all that, you’re just enough of a bastard to be worth liking, and even if you weren’t any of that you would _still. Be. Enough_.”

Aziraphale choked on a laugh against Crowley’s chest, and slowly began to get his breath back again, the tremble in his hands easing, the tension in his shoulders loosening under Crowley’s hands. Finally, after five minutes or fifty, who knew, he rubbed his cheek into Crowley’s chest and sighed.

“Of course _you’d_ think that though,” Aziraphale said, with a wobbly bit of a joke, poking at Crowley’s waist. “Bit biased, you are.” 

“Excuse me,” Crowley said, mock-offended, letting him shift the mood--when it was too much, he knew, it was too much. Aziraphale would come back to it again when he was ready. “I happen to have impeccable taste.” 

“Don’t lie, I’ve seen your flat.”

“Says the man six inches deep in dust. You wouldn’t know taste if it bit you on the arse.”

“Fell in love with you, didn’t I?” Aziraphale said, finally pulling back to look up at Crowley. His cheeks were flushed, but his eyes were dry. Crowley pressed another kiss to his forehead, and then another, chaste and tender, to his mouth.

“All right,” he conceded. “ _Some_ taste.”

Aziraphale rolled his eyes, smiling a little, and looked back at the books. “What if we don’t find it here?” he asked. “The will, I mean.”

Crowley shrugged. “Then we’ll look somewhere else. We won’t give up. Promise.” He let Aziraphale shift away then, but took his hand, held it tight in his. “Are you ready for this?” he asked.

For a moment, Aziraphale only stood there, hesitating, surveying the collection. Then he reached out with his free hand, and slowly slipped another Bible off the shelf, and then another, and another, stacking them up. “I’m ready,” he answered. “Let’s put this ghost to rest.” 


	21. Gingerbread

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to tumblr user @insertnerdyjokehere for providing the extra prompt, as well as everyone else who made suggestions!

_Crowley._

The voice was strange and faraway, coming to Crowley like a call on the wind, like the distant ring of a bell. He was warm under the weight of it, turning his face toward it, seeking, searching, wanting. 

_Crowley,_ the voice said again, with gentle fingers, with a tender smile, and it sounded like Christmas morning, like cocoa and gingerbread and the scent of pine trees, like the glow of fairy lights and the spark of fire in its grate and the hush of soft, familiar songs. Crowley wanted to stay in it, wrap himself up in it, sink down into it. _Crowley, my dear, it’s time to wake up._

There were fingers in his hair, and Crowley woke up.

Aziraphale smiled down at him, haloed in the morning light that streamed in through the doorway; it was his fingers in Crowley’s hair, combing it back from his forehead, unbearably affectionate. Caught in the sleep-soft haze of waking, Crowley made a noise deep in his throat, stretching along the threadbare sofa he’d fallen asleep on, and reached up, almost surprised at the heat of Aziraphale’s cheek, at the softness of his skin.

“Good morning,” Aziraphale said, catching Crowley’s hand and kissing the backs of his fingers.

“Morning,” Crowley rumbled back, trying to remember how he’d got here. It seemed he’d just sat down a moment ago--he’d had a folio of old receipts, that was right, and wanted to go through the lot. That had been at half-three in the morning; Aziraphale had fallen asleep around two in one of the chairs, one of his mother’s old Bibles spread on his lap. Crowley had almost stopped then, captivated by the sight of Aziraphale’s face relaxed in sleep, but eventually he’d pulled himself together, maneuvered the Bible out of Aziraphale’s grasp, and kept going. “Time is it?”

Aziraphale hummed. He smelled fresh, like the humid air of a shower; his bow-tie was crisp and new. “Still early,” he said, obviously prevaricating, but Crowley still let him dip in and kiss him anyway, slow and a bit sweet, and that warm, sunlight-through-water, Christmas-morning feeling rose up in Crowley’s chest again, bright and hot and soothing. _Welcome home._

“How early’s early?” Crowley asked, when Aziraphale finally pressed one last kiss to the corner of Crowley’s mouth.

“Not as early as I’m sure you’d like,” Aziraphale admitted. “But I only woke up an hour ago myself, and you looked like you needed the sleep. It’s about quarter to nine.”

Crowley grimaced and heaved himself into an upright position. A blanket he was certain he hadn’t had when he’d fallen asleep fell into his lap. “You’re right--I should’ve been up hours ago. Has Newt rung?”

“He’s made it to Abingdon,” Aziraphale said. “He’s got the list you sent Anathema of things to ask for, so he should be all set. Hopefully we’ll know soon whether they’ve got it. Did you--” he hesitated, trying very hard not to look too hopeful-- “Did you find anything else last night?”

“Unfortunately not. Only a couple more Bibles left on that shelf; I left the older, more tattered-looking ones alone for you to go through.” Aziraphale looked relieved at that, and he helped Crowley pull himself off the sofa. “Started looking through some of the folios and files out there, though. Mostly receipts, it looked like. Not a lot of documents that looked like they’d have much to do with Sanctus, though.”

Aziraphale sighed, rubbing his hands together nervously. “What if we don’t find it?” he asked.

“We will,” Crowley assured him. “Come on, let me show you what I got through last night.”

*

The bookshop was different by day, though not by much; it was still a winding, confusing maze of stacks and shelves, dead-ends and loops, odds and ends of curios stuffed in among the haphazard piles. Crowley watched Aziraphale flit through it, clearly at ease with the organisation, clearly at home amongst the leather and paper, and Crowley fell just that little bit more in love.

There were a _lot_ of books, though.

Crowley chose a stack at random, close to where Aziraphale was settling in with the oldest Bibles, the ones in the worst condition, and started going through them, looking for the will, or anything that might have suggested where to find it.

At half-nine, Anathema stopped around, bringing a cocoa for Aziraphale and a coffee for Crowley, which he gratefully took as a sign of forgiveness, as well as a couple of wrapped breakfast sandwiches. “I’ve gotten together a list of solicitors,” she told Crowley. “I’ll start from the top, let you know what I find.”

“Heard from Newt again?” he asked.

Anathema shook her head. “He’s not much for texting. He’ll call when he can.” She stopped to whisper something briefly in Aziraphale’s ear, smiling brilliantly at whatever he told her, and then went back to the cafe to make her calls.

*

At half-eleven, Aziraphale sat back in his chair, tossing a pair of tweezers aside. “That’s the Bibles, then,” he announced, dejectedly. “Nothing.”

Crowley looked up from an old, worn copy of _Paradise Lost_. “There are still other books to go through, angel,” he said, trying to sound encouraging, but he had to admit, it was a pretty big blow. He’d been certain that if Aziraphale’s mother was going to stash a copy of her will somewhere in the books, the Bibles were the safest bet--historically, all sorts of families had kept all sorts of records in their Bibles. He looked over the bookshop, wondering where else they might look, and felt his heart sinking. 

Aziraphale put his head in his hands and groaned. “Maybe I ought to just call round home and ask them,” he said.

“Do you think that’ll work?”

“Not really,” Aziraphale acknowledged, “but it’s worth a shot, isn’t it?”

Crowley didn’t think so, personally, but he wasn’t going to tell Aziraphale what to do or not do. He took the copy of _Paradise Lost_ a few shelves away, giving Aziraphale some privacy--he actually had a rotary phone, which Crowley thought was spectacularly endearing, despite really wishing he didn’t--and tried not to listen in on Aziraphale’s half of the conversation. Finally he heard Aziraphale say, “Fine, fine,” irritatedly, and then the clatter of the handset being tossed back into the base.

“No luck?” he asked, when Aziraphale came around the corner to find him.

“No luck,” Aziraphale confirmed. “Uriel answered--she’d have been the best bet out of all of them, too. Said if I wanted to know anything about our mother’s records I’d have to ask Gabriel.” He snorted. “I guess that tells us that all of my siblings _do_ know what Gabriel’s up to, though. Uriel only works part-time with Sanctus; she’s a professor at Oxford most of the time. Poetry, I think, and art history.”

“Got any other siblings who might be more forthcoming?”

Aziraphale shook his head. “Michael and Sandalphon are the most involved in Sanctus, but they’ll be loyal to Gabriel to the end.” He sighed and leaned back against a bookcase, tilting his head back and closing his eyes. “We’ve got to find that will,” he said, after a moment, his voice unexpectedly firm. “I can’t stand losing to Gabriel at this point--we simply have _got_ to find it.”

Crowley wasn’t sure they _would_ anymore, but he couldn’t bear the thought of giving up, so he grinned anyway. “We’ll get it,” he said. “Come on then. I’ve got the Miltons here--why don’t you give the Greeks over there a once-over?”

*

At half-twelve, Anathema came in with more sandwiches--and more bad news. “Newt’s just called,” she said, as Crowley and Aziraphale took a seat in the front window of the shop to eat. “Abdingdon didn’t have the records.” 

Crowley winced. “Next closest records office is . . . Berkshire?”

Anathema nodded. “Clear on the other side of Tadfield. He’s on his way there now. What time is the closing, Aziraphale?”

“Two,” Aziraphale answered, looking down at his sandwich. “He’ll be too late even if they do have it.”

“He’s going anyway, just to check,” Anathema said, and then they all sat in discouraged quiet for a few moments. Crowley put his sandwich down to reach a hand over to Aziraphale’s knee, just squeezing-- _I’m still here, we’re still looking_ , he wanted to say, and Aziraphale did shoot him a little smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

Then the shop door opened once more, and laughter and shouting poured in from the pavement outside in the shape of four rowdy kids: the Them.

“Oh, no, I don’t think so, not today,” Aziraphale said weakly, but the protest fell on deaf ears as the kids sorted themselves out and settled down. Wensleydale, the one Crowley remembered as being half-tax accountant already, was eying Aziraphale’s books as though he’d found the holy grail; Brian, the perpetually sort of dirty one, was holding his hands quite tightly to his chest, as though afraid to accidentally touch anything. “Shouldn’t you lot be in school?”

“We had a short week,” Adam, the lead kid, volunteered. “On account of the holidays.”

Pepper popped in then. “We wanted to know,” she said, “whether you knew anything about the Antichrist. My mother says that’s a load of hogwash--”

“But our teacher this morning told us that he was alive on Earth today, and that the end times were coming, and if _that’s_ true then we ought to be prepared--”

“Actually, she said that the end times were _here already,_ which I feel is importantly distinctive--”

“But the last time I asked round up the St Anne’s, Father McDermott said that wouldn’t happen for thousands of years yet--”

“Well, I certainly hope not,” Aziraphale cut in. “And I’m sorry, everyone, but I’m too busy today, and,” he paused, swallowing hard, “and I’m not sure where you’ll be able to find me after this, but I can call your mother, Adam, once everything is settled, and let you know what I think.”

The Them looked up at him suspiciously, then over to Crowley, then back to Aziraphale. “Are you moving to London to be with your Mr Crowley?” Brian ventured to ask.

“I don’t know,” Aziraphale said firmly, making Crowley’s stomach swoop-- _I don’t know_ was a far cry from _I don’t think so,_ and not even in the same postcode as _No._ “Now, if you don’t mind, we’re rather busy looking for something here, so--”

Adam perked up immediately. “We can help! What’re you looking for for?” Wensleydale looked as though Christmas had come early at the prospect of going through Aziraphale’s books; Pepper looked a little mutinous, but like she knew she shouldn’t be. “We were going to play Armageddon today, but that can wait until tomorrow, if it’s important.”

“It was just some old papers of his mum’s,” Anathema said, stepping in and starting to herd the kids toward the door. “Why don’t you all come back to the cafe with me, and I’ll make you some cocoa?”

Brian, who’d been picking at a scab on his elbow, brightened at this. “My cousin says that your mum was a witch,” he said to Aziraphale. “Very interesting stuff, witches.” He turned back to the group. “Maybe we ought to play Spanish Inquisition today, and pick up with Armageddy-whatsit tomorrow.”

Aziraphale laughed despite himself. “She was not a witch,” he said, waving them out of the shop after Anathema, “and I remember your cousin, Brian, and I doubt very much that that was really the word she used.”

“If your mum _was_ a witch though,” Adam said, stopped in the doorway, “you should check with Sergeant Shadwell and see if he has it. He collects things like that, doesn’t he? I heard from my dad that he’s a nutter, but I reckon it’s pretty sensible, to keep stuff like that. Witch stuff and so on. Someone ought to keep it, or who knows where it might end up?”

Aziraphale had stopped laughing. He turned to Crowley, who had already got to his feet, heart hammering, palms sweating. “Do you think?” 

“Couldn’t hurt to ask,” Crowley said, trying to temper the rallying cry in his chest with a little caution, and the Them led them triumphantly out the door.

*

Crowley was beginning to suspect that the overcoat Shadwell favoured might have been permanently attached, because he was still wearing it when the whole lot of them filed into the Oxfam shop next door. “What’s this,” he shouted from behind the counter, down the length of the shop. “You kids--Ms Anathema, Mr Aziraphale--” he caught sight of Crowley-- “ _You. Demon_. _”_

“Now, Sergeant, Crowley here--”

“He’s a _demon_ ,” Shadwell insisted. “A force of evil, he is, a right evil bastard.”

“It’s all right,” Crowley said to Aziraphale, who had flushed quite red in the cheeks. “That’s definitely not the worst thing anyone’s ever called me.”

“Be that as it may,” Aziraphale began again, “Crowley is here as my friend, doing a personal favour to me,” and then he had to pause to glare at Anathema, who’d coughed something that sounded a lot like _isthatwhattheycallitthesedays_ , before carrying on, “And I need to know what, if anything, you might have here that was my mother’s.”

Crowley had, in his line of work, seen a lot of men get backed into corners they didn’t particularly want to be in, and that’s where Shadwell was now. He shrank into his overcoat, looking distinctly guilty. “I didn’t get nothing of your mother’s that weren’t given to me right and proper,” he said, and began shuffling through a bunch of papers tacked up around the counter. “That brother Gabriel arranged for me to come and take it, I have the papers around here somewhere.”

Aziraphale took a deep breath. “Yes, I imagine you do,” he said. “We aren’t interested in taking the lot of it; whatever you have, you can keep. We only want to look through it for some papers she might have had tucked away.”

Shadwell narrowed his eyes at them, but finally seemed to conclude that Aziraphale was a man enough of his word to trust them. “Fine then,” he agreed. “But you’ll not take anything from this shop without proper payments and permissions.”

Crowley, Aziraphale, Anathema, and the Them all squeezed along the length of the shop, following Shadwell in a single-file line as he enumerated his many rules for the handling of his artefacts, his expectations that there’d be no witchcraft conducted on the premises, and his lifetime ban of any black cats. He even tried to ask Crowley how many nipples he had, once he’d showed them down into a rather sketchy sort of storage basement, towards a corner that was stacked with a few trunks, but Aziraphale squeaked and said, “Thank you!” very loudly over him.

“It’s just the two anyway,” Crowley said to Aziraphale once Shadwell had gone back to the front of his shop. With a painfully straight face, he added, “I’ll show you sometime, if you like.”

Aziraphale flushed bright red, but he did grin, which Crowley thought was worth it. “I’m sure they’re very lovely,” he said, attempting to be stoic about it, but Crowley caught him having a look at his chest before turning to the nearest trunk.

Most of the trunks were filled with curios and old clothes, costume jewelry and ornate dishes, that sort of thing. Anathema had found most of the papers in one trunk, and sat herself down on the floor to go through them with Crowley. At one point Brian pulled a silvery-black crown out of a bag of shirts, and crowed gleefully about the find; Wensleydale became rather enamored himself with a pair of brass scales. Pepper found a sword, of all things, which Aziraphale promptly confiscated, saying, “Yes, yes, I’m no fun, I know, but there’ll be no swords today.”

The Them groaned, but immediately went about latching on to other things to play with anyway. Aziraphale took the sword over to the stairs, as if he meant to go up and ask Shadwell to get rid of it, but when he got there, he only paused for a moment, and then sat on the steps, his head hanging low between his shoulders.

It was getting late, Crowley thought. Past one-thirty already; no doubt Hastur and Ligur were already showing up to Tadfield Manor, closing papers in hand. He set down a notebook that appeared to be full of notes on apple orchards, and followed after Aziraphale.

“You sure your mum wasn’t a witch?” he said, climbing just a little higher on the stairs to sit behind him. Aziraphale still had the sword in his hand, looking at it this way and that, occasionally looking up at the Them flying around with their finds--Pepper had a cape on now, which suited her much better than the sword, and Adam had on a black robe that he was flapping around like wings. They weren’t helpful in the least, Crowley thought, but it was a fond sort of thought, and not really an irritated one. “She had an awful lot of witchy stuff packed up in these trunks.”

“Less sure now, I suppose,” Aziraphale conceded. He laughed, a soft, nostalgic thing. “Actually, when I was little, I thought she was God.”

Crowley bumped him with his legs, scooting to sit a step or two behind him with one on either side of Aziraphale’s hips. He leaned down, resting his chin on Aziraphale’s shoulder. “All kids do, when they’re little. A little bit.”

Aziraphale didn’t answer. Instead he leaned back against Crowley, tense and exhausted and tight with the dawning realisation that they weren’t going to find the will after all. Crowley hugged him a little closer, nuzzling his nose into Aziraphale’s hair. He smelled like gingerbread.

“It’s 1:45,” Aziraphale said eventually. He shifted, looking round and up at Crowley. “Do something,” he pleaded. “Can’t you do something?”

“Wish I could, angel, but I can’t stop time.” Crowley had tried, too--he’d been texting all morning, trying to figure out whether Dagon had really come back from Aruba or if someone else had taken the case on in the meantime. He’d gotten a few sparse answers from the paralegals he knew at Morningstar & Prince, but apparently news of his quitting had been widespread and nobody was opening up. Dagon herself hadn’t responded at all, and Crowley hadn’t exactly been trying to hold onto his dignity, by that point--he’d begged, and pretty unrestrainedly, too.

 _Look closer at the titles_ , he’d sent. _There’s an issue with a will--conflict in ownership. Look closer before you have anyone sign. Put the closing off until you’re sure. I’m looking for the documentation right now, I just need a little more time._

No responses.

“What will we do now?” Aziraphale asked softly. “Madame Tracy, Sergeant Shadwell, Newt and Anathema. Me and my books. What do we do, Crowley? Where do we go?”

Crowley pulled Aziraphale further back against him, wrapping his arms around his shoulders. “I’ll help you pack up your books,” he said. “And in the meantime, we’ll keep looking. The will has to be registered somewhere.”

“It won’t stop the sale, though, will it? It won’t undo this.”

“Probably not,” Crowley said. “You’ll probably be entitled to a pay-out, some portion of the profits that Sanctus saw. Some damages, because it’s clear that Sanctus is doing this in bad faith at this point. The value of your rent, something like that.”

“But only for me,” Aziraphale said, watching Anathema as she finally acquiesced to the Them’s attempts to get her to try on the witchiest-looking clothes they could pull out of the trunks. She laughed, demonstrating a fur coat, and the Them clamoured for the opportunity to get her to choose the next thing. “Everyone else will be out of luck, isn’t that right?”

Crowley pressed a kiss hard to the side of Aziraphale’s head. “I’m sorry,” he said. “If I’d told you sooner, we might have had more time to look.”

“Yes,” Aziraphale answered quietly, raising the hand without a sword to clasp onto Crowley’s wrists. “I know.” But his hold felt like forgiveness, and he leaned back against Crowley for a long, silent moment, breathing in time with him. Crowley wondered if he could feel his heartbeat, through his chest, from his ribcage into Aziraphale’s. _I love you, I love you_ , the beat said; Crowley hoped that Aziraphale still heard him.

Another trunk was opened in the corner, and more clothes were brought out, thrown upon Anathema, the Them laughing and laughing, and Crowley was glad of this moment, a bit. That they could sit through the whole closing like this, listening to Anathema laugh with these kids, with people who loved Aziraphale and who were loved by Aziraphale. If the world as they knew it had to end today, Crowley couldn’t think of a better way to spend the last seconds of it.

Then Adam said, “Mr Aziraphale? Is this it?” 

Crowley’s head jerked up, and Aziraphale was up and off the stairs in a flash. Adam was holding a thick collection of fine-looking paper, bound with a strip of professional blue binding.

Aziraphale took the papers with a trembling hand, and then looked back at Crowley. “This is it,” he said, eyes wide, voice thick, and Crowley was there in an instant, supporting Aziraphale with an arm around the waist, looking over his shoulder at the pages.

The first page read, in a formal, elegant script, _Last Will and Testament._

Crowley’s watch, when he looked down at it, read _1:58 p.m._


	22. Miracles

Crowley breathed in.

There, clutched in Aziraphale’s hands, bound and stamped and titled, was the final answer--the answer to whether Tadfield could be saved, to whether Aziraphale’s mother had protected him or whether his siblings had taken advantage of him, to whether he and his books would have a home or whether he’d finally find himself cast out. To whether the heart of Tadfield would survive, or whether the soul of this place, of these people, would be crumbled to dust, paved over by corporate chain shops and apathetic commuters.

_Last Will and Testament._

He could see all of it, all at once, slotting into place like so many dominoes: the mother and the death--the will and the bequest--the titles and the conflict-- the record searches, the lease--the secretive sale, the hurried closing-- _1:58 p.m. and six, seven, eight, nine seconds_ \--everything lined up into perfect rows, numbered and marked--the pendulum drawn back, poised and ready to swing.

 _Which direction_ , he thought, staring down at the bundle of pages. _Which direction do you fall?_

Aziraphale was still where he was pressed against Crowley, and his fingers trembled and his voice was thick in his throat. “Oh,” he said, quiet and defeated. “But we’re too late, aren’t we? It’s over.”

The pendulum in Crowley’s mind dropped, and the dominoes began to fall, tipping over one after the next after the next, tumbling together, cascading along faster and faster and faster, line after line of them racing and racing and sliding and falling falling _falling_ , forming a picture of the dining room at Tadfield Manor where the closing was about to take place, where Dagon stood at one end with the menacing figures of Zuigiber, Sable and White at her back, and Ligur at the other, with Aziraphale’s own family behind him, all slick smiles and handshakes and pages of documents, where signatures were being placed on contracts and on cheques--and where a ring of keys hung in the air, in the ether, suspended between one moment and the next, waiting to pass from one hand into another.

Crowley breathed out. His watch ticked over to _1:59 p.m._

“Not yet,” he said, fierce and decisive, snatching the pages from Aziraphale’s hands and dashing for the stairs. “Come on, angel--it’s not over yet!”

*

“Crowley!”

Crowley didn’t stop, he didn’t have _time_ to stop. He thundered back up the stairs into the Oxfam shop proper with pages in hand, flipping furiously through them with Aziraphale close behind, dodging piles of old handbags and stacks of shoes as he raced through the narrow shop.

“We’ve got to get up to Tadfield Manor,” he called back over his shoulder, just catching sight of Anathema still in some voluminous skirt behind Aziraphale and the Them behind her, laughing and shouting as they brought up the rear. “Closings don’t happen in an instant--we might be able to stop it before it’s all finalised--”

“Oh--” Aziraphale’s speed kicked up a notch or two-- “Do you really think we can?”

“Wouldn’t be running if I didn’t!”

At the front, Shadwell was bent over the counter, deep in conversation with Madame Tracy over what looked like a crystal ball, but he drew himself up at the sight of the group barreling towards the door. “Oi!” he protested loudly. “What’re you lot stealing--what did I say--stop right there!”

“Oh, do shut up, Sergeant!” Aziraphale yelled over him, rushing around Madame Tracy after Crowley. “We really are in quite a rush!”

Crowley laughed, half-giddy with adrenalin, rifling through the pages of the will, trying to get a feel for the organisation of it. Trusts, wills, estates, all that rot--none of it had never been his strong suit; if he ever got into the business of writing these documents, he’d at least be sure to put in a bloody index.

The lot of them spilled out onto the pavement in a flood of whoops and shouts, now with Sergeant Shadwell--still protesting about thieves--and Madame Tracy--cooing over Pepper’s cape--joining the throng. “Oh, Mr Crowley!” someone shouted, and Crowley turned to to see Newt emerging from a wobbly blue Reliant Robin parked in front of the cafe.

“Thought you were in Berkshire,” Crowley called back, waving at him. “Abingdon was a bust, eh?”

“Total bust,” Newt agreed. “And Berkshire’s clear on the other side of Tadfield--figured I would just stop for some lunch.” He glanced round at everyone, and gave Crowley an uncertain smile. “What’s going on, then?”

“We found the papers!” Wensleydale shouted, and Crowley turned to see Aziraphale ushering the four kids into the back seat of the Bentley. “Just like a real Christmas miracle! We’re going to save the day!”

“No!” Crowley shouted back. “No, no, we’re not taking the kids up there, angel!”

“Well they won’t all fit in _that!_ _”_ Aziraphale said, gesturing at the little Reliant Robin.

“We’re not taking anybody--”

“Oh, that’s all right,” Anathema cut in. “We can bring Madame Tracy and Sergeant Shadwell. Tadfield Manor,” she added, to Newt. “We’re storming the castle, so to speak.”

Shadwell eyed at the Reliant Robin, clutching his chest. “I’ll nae get into that thing!”

“Come along, Mr S, we’ll just squeeze into the back, then--”

“Don’t worry, Sergeant, Dick Turpin’s never let me down yet--”

Crowley threw up his hands--Anathema could handle it, or not--preferably not--and took off toward the Bentley, where Aziraphale was standing on the passenger side, waiting for him. “We don’t have time for this. Get in, angel!”

Aziraphale pointed at the will still in Crowley’s hands. “Are you sure you should be driving?” he asked. “Aren’t you going to read that?”

“Do _you_ know how to drive a 1926 Bentley?”

“No, but--”

“But you _can_ read, I expect.” He shoved himself into the drivers’ seat and passed the pages back to Aziraphale, who had settled in and turned to very firmly tell the crew of children in the back seat to sit quietly so that Mr Crowley could concentrate. “So you read, I’ll drive.” Crowley rolled the window down as he backed out of his parking spot, shaking his head at himself even as he did so. The things village life made a man do, honestly.

“Newt!” he called, against his better judgment. “Meet us at Tadfield Manor!”

*

Crowley was going ninety miles an hour down the high street, and four children in the backseat thought it was _much_ cooler than the beautiful fusspot in the passenger seat did.

“Really, my dear, do we have to go _quite_ so fast? It’s a bit dangerous, is all.”

“You know, angel, I think I do,” Crowley said, pressing a little harder on the gas pedal, which was almost down to the floor as it was. “Under the circumstances, I really, really do.”

“We don’t mind,” Pepper added helpfully from the back seat. “I’ve never gone this fast in a car before.”

“And you never will again,” Crowley promised her, with a very serious glance over his shoulder, at which Pepper sat back in her seat a little and nodded. “Aziraphale, the will, if you _don_ _’t_ mind.”

Aziraphale huffed as if he wanted to mind but had thought better of it, then cleared his throat. “ _Last Will and Testament_ ,” he read, as Crowley swung off the high street and sped toward the outer limits of town. He clutched dramatically at his seat and gave Crowley a rather put-upon look, but kept going. “ _Being of sound mind and body_ \--”

Crowley waved him on hurriedly. “Skip to the next.”

“Erm, all right.” Aziraphale flipped the page. “ _I appoint as my personal representatives and executor of this estate, Gabriel_ \--oh, Gabriel, why doesn’t _that_ surprise me--”

“Next!”

“ _My executors will_ \--”

“Skip all that, it’ll just be boilerplate--look for division of property--”

“Excuse me, Mr Aziraphale, but what is an executor?”

“Is it like an executioner? Did Mr Gabriel execute your mum?”

“Children, please.” Aziraphale shot a look back toward Adam and Brian, who both went silent in that very loud, exasperated way only children could go silent, and then shuffled through more of the pages. “Okay, okay. Bequests here to charity--the Arts Council, Book Aid International--”

Crowley’s fingers were going white around the steering wheel; the speedometer was ticking up toward a hundred. “Next, next,” he urged Aziraphale on. They were getting close.

“ _As to the Sanctus Corporation, to each of my eight children_ \--”

“There’s _eight_ of you?” Crowley looked over in shock.

“Eyes on the road, please!” Aziraphale yelped. “Yes, there’s eight--”

“Ugh, nevermind that--the bookshop, angel!”

“Right, of course--here’s Heaven’s Pointe--here’s the London properties--ah, here we are!” Aziraphale cleared his throat, glancing nervously at Crowley, and then he hesitated; Crowley reached over to put a hand on Aziraphale’s knee, squeezing gently. “To my son--” he faltered, stopped. “To my son Aziraphale--” he stopped again.

“Whatever it says,” Crowley said quietly, encouraging, “No matter what, I’m going to fight for you, all right? I’m going to be right here with you.”

Aziraphale nodded, his face white, and turned back to the page. “ _To my son Aziraphale_ ,” he read, voice shaking, “ _full ownership and title to the following real property_ \-- _yes,_ that’s my address!” He shook the papers in Crowley’s face, the tremble in his voice giving way to laughing, and the Them in the backseat cheered and high-fived one another. “Full ownership, Crowley!”

 _Full ownership_. The air went out of Crowley’s lungs in one gigantic, relieved _whoosh,_ and he grabbed Aziraphale’s hand, squeezing hard. “ _Knew it!_ ” he said, cackling gleefully. “Hang onto that page, angel, that’s our flaming sword, all right?”

The Bentley swung into the long drive leading up to Tadfield Manor. The house loomed on the hill above them, dark and terrifying, but Crowley’s heart soared, strong and full and true.

Aziraphale’s hand was warm in his, and Crowley was in love with him and he was in love with Crowley, their own _real_ miracle, and together they were going to save the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks everyone for your patience in the short break this fic had to take! If you follow me on Tumblr you'll have seen that just after the new year I slipped on the ice and sustained a serious knee injury. Fortunately I won't need surgery, but it's another two weeks in a full leg immobilizer and crutches and then six to eight weeks of PT. I'm just now getting my life back into order, and finally feeling good enough to get back to writing. Thanks so much for waiting for me!
> 
> There aren't that many chapters left for us here, so hopefully we'll see the end by the time the week is out!


	23. All Wrapped Up

_Ba-bum, ba-bum._

Crowley’s blood rushed in his ears, crashing and thundering, roaring like an inferno. His teeth were clenched; his knuckles were white; they were almost there.

 _Ba-bum._ The Bentley skidded to a stop at the end of the drive, in front of the Manor; Crowley was out the door and up the steps before the engine had even finished turning over, pounding against the broad oak expanse of the doors so hard his fists ached.

 _Ba-bum._ Behind him, he could hear Aziraphale ushering the kids out of the car, telling Adam to wait until Newt and Anathema arrived--the wobbly blue Reliant Robin just visible at the mouth of the drive; he could hear Aziraphale dashing up the steps after him, could feel the warmth of him at his back; he could see the hallways of the house branching out behind these closed doors, the paths he would lead Aziraphale down hand-in-hurried-hand.

 _Ba-bum_ , his heart thrummed, _Aziraphale_. He reached for the handle, wrenching the door open; the afternoon light spilled into shadows and dissipated like smoke, too weak to fight against the gloom that lived in these walls. _Aziraphale._

“It’s ten after two,” Aziraphale reported quietly.

Crowley looked at him, at the will still clutched in his hands, at the darkness reaching out to pull them in. “Are you sure?” he asked. “Your family will be in here.”

Aziraphale only hesitated long enough to draw his shoulders back, to lift his chin. “I’m very sure.”

_Ba-bum, ba-bum._

Aziraphale stepped into the house, into the cool darkness, and he _shone_ against the shadows, as bright and strong as a bar of flaming magnesium--brilliant, and fierce, and righteous--and Crowley loved him, Crowley was in love with him, just as he was in love with Crowley.

_Ba-bum. Aziraphale._

From the drive, Adam called out after them, “Go show ‘em, Mr Crowley!”

Crowley sure as Hell would.

*

Down the winding halls, past the empty rooms, footsteps clattering and echoing: Crowley knew exactly where he was going, and he went there _fast_ , with Aziraphale at his elbow and a plan growing in his mind, what to say, what to argue, how to negotiate, where to look, who to threaten first and how. The dining room--Zuigiber’s _war room_ , and honestly, people called _Crowley_ melodramatic--was at the far end of the house, and Crowley took the path there at half-a-run, Aziraphale just a step behind him.

Down the hall, to the right, to the right again, past the courtyard, through the gallery, down half a step and across the second parlor: Crowley and Aziraphale burst in, just in time to see Dagon, tall and serious and very tan, reaching across the table to pass Ligur a pen.

The room fell silent.

Crowley grinned at everyone, waving. “Hi, guys,” he said.

At one end of the room, Zuigiber, Sable, and White were gathered around a fireplace with Beez; at the other, Hastur stood guard in front of two men that didn’t look anything at all like Aziraphale--one shorter and broader and balder, and the other taller, more severe, as if he’d stepped out of the pages of a business magazine with the airbrushing still stuck on him. _Gabriel_ , Crowley expected.

“Oh, Aziraphale,” Airbrushed Airhead sighed, heaving himself out of his armchair and sounding as if he practiced that particular tone of exasperated disappointment in the mirror every morning. “Are you really going to drag this out?”

“We really are,” Aziraphale agreed tartly, eyes blazing. “So sorry I didn’t ring ahead.”

Beez had pushed her way forward as well, and she stepped in next to Gabriel. “And you too?” she hissed at Crowley. “Do you really want to be in more trouble than you already are? Conflicts of interest, violating client confidentiality, _trespass_ \--I should’ve known, Anthony J. Crowley. You never did know when to leave well enough alone.”

Beside him, Aziraphale caught his breath; when he looked round, Aziraphale was staring back as if he’d never seen him before. “Anthony?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said awkwardly--of course, he’d only ever introduced himself as _Crowley_ , and even his business cards only said _A. J. Crowley_ on them. He hesitated at Aziraphale’s shocked expression. “Er, yeah. Do you not like it?”

“No, I didn’t say that,” Aziraphale answered. “Seems silly, but I’d actually forgotten I didn’t know it. _Anthony._ ” He paused, tasting the word in his mouth, then asked, “What’s the _J_ stand for?”

“Jackass,” Beez supplied, looking back and forth between them incredulously. “If you’re quite finished, we’re all in the middle of something. What in Hell are you doing here?”

“Advocating on behalf of the client,” Crowley said smoothly, remembering himself. He tugged the will out of Aziraphale’s grip and flipped through it--Aziraphale had helpfully dog-eared the page with the bequest of the bookshop.

“You don’t have a client,” Beez sneered, “in case you forgot. You don’t have _any_ clients, and you never will again.”

“I know, I’m doing you a favour on this one. Consider it a freebie.” He held up the will where he’d found the right page, tapping at the relevant paragraph. “You lot can’t close on this--there’s a title issue. Little bookshop right in the middle of the property is owned by Aziraphale here-- _not_ the Sanctus Corporation.”

Gabriel had gone as white as a sheet; Beez reached out to snatch the will from Crowley’s hands. “By all means,” he allowed, as casually as he could. He didn’t feel especially casual--the blood was singing in his veins, actually, the adrenalin pounding a six-eight rhythm in his chest--but the effect could not be beat. He tossed a lazy smile over to Hastur and Ligur.

“I bet you two knew that, didn’t you? Considering how slimy you were about titles during negotiations. Have to wonder if that clause made it into the final draft--so sorry to hear about your upcoming ethics review.” They squirmed, whispering fiercely into each other’s ears, and Crowley looked at Dagon. “And _you_ would have known it if you’d done your due diligence like I told you, so you’ve no one to blame but yourself, really.”

Crowley sucked in his breath, making it hiss through his teeth, and shot a triumphant, mock-sympathetic look to Beez, who was looking up from the page with lips so thin they’d gone white. “ _Embarrassing_ , isn’t it?”

“And this is all valid?” Beez asked, flipping to the last page of the document, where Aziraphale’s mum had signed in an elaborate, unreadable script, as well as a solicitor out of Oxford and a notary public.

“Looks like it, doesn’t it?”

She looked at him. She’d given him that look a few times when they were at school together, but Crowley hadn’t seen it in so long he was surprised she knew how to contort her face into it: _surrender_. Beatrice Z. Prince looked him right in the eye, closed the document in her hands, and nodded. “It does, actually, look like it.”

“I think,” Gabriel finally said, pulling himself together, “this is probably all just a big misunderstanding.”

“Oh, I think it is,” Aziraphale agreed, saccharine and poisonously sweet, and Crowley knew with sudden, vivid clarity that if Aziraphale ever used that tone on him, he may as well skip the argument and go right to his knees to start groveling. “I think it was probably all a very big, very _deliberate_ misunderstanding.”

“Look, I don’t know where you got that--”

“From my bloody shop, is where he got it, the wretched thief!”

And the rest of the cavalry had finally arrived, it seemed: Shadwell was in the lead, stomping in through the doorway with Madame Tracy fluttering behind him; Newt and Anathema came in last, ushering in the Them, who all looked around with wide, curious eyes, taking in the gloom of the hall, whispering _woah_ and _cool_ to one another.

“Sergeant, so glad you could join us,” Crowley said, nodding at the lot of them, and he gestured to Beez to hold up the will. “This document came to you in the trunks from Heaven’s Pointe, did it not?”

“Aye, and it’s mine,” Shadwell said, jabbing Crowley in the chest with a gnarled finger. “Mr Gabriel here brought everything in with a van and said here, take the lot, s’all junk s’far as he was concerned but--” here he cut a glance toward Aziraphale, suddenly going apologetic and withdrawing his finger-- “he said there was no reason for Mr Aziraphale to know about it.”

Madame Tracy put her hands on her hips. “Mr Shadwell,” she said, in the tone of affronted grandmothers worldwide. Shadwell cowered.

“Away with ye, woman,” he grunted, but his face had flushed and his shoulders had hunched, and Madame Tracy only arched a disapproving eyebrow that could probably have killed a man at five paces, or at the very least guaranteed him an over-cooked Sunday dinner for the rest of his earthly existence. Finally, Shadwell turned to Aziraphale and caved entirely. “M’not sorry, as it’s only business, but I suppose ye can keep that piece of paper, if ye like. As recompense for the deception.”

Aziraphale, of course, didn’t have it in him to stay mad, and he accepted the non-apology with a curt “Thank you,” but a soft smile, before turning to Gabriel.

“So tell me,” he said, “where there’s this big misunderstanding when it’s written right there that that property is _mine_.”

“There isn’t one,” Beez said smoothly. “Not where we’re concerned. The ownership of the property is, at the very least, contested--my clients will, of course, immediately withdraw any purchase offers.” She cut a look at Dagon that said they’d be having it out themselves later, and then back at Zuigiber, Sable, and White, who were watching with passive disinterest at the drama unfolding in front of them.

“If you’ll excuse me,” she said, shoving the papers back into Crowley’s chest and setting off toward the other end of the room, “I have a long explanation and apology to give.”

“Now, hang on, let’s not jump to any conclusions,” Gabriel began. “None of that is important, Aziraphale, you know that. You know our mother intended for me to do what was best for the family--”

“I don’t know any such thing,” Aziraphale snapped. “Our mother did have a plan, but _her plan_ was for me to own that shop outright, and you kept that from me. You _stole_ that from me--not just the shop, but that she had taken care of me, that she’d given me her blessing.” Aziraphale’s voice trembled, but his jaw was set and his eyes burned. “She was never very good at loving me, if we’re honest, but in the end she tried, and you took even that from me.”

“Aziraphale,” Gabriel said, with an awkward, defensive sort of laugh, turning to throw a look at the Balder Broader Brother, presumably for back-up, “You don’t really think--I mean, I realise that perhaps you didn’t fully understand Mum’s plan as to all that--”

“Mum’s plan wasn’t _ineffable,_ Gabriel, she bloody well wrote it down--”

“I just mean that we all know that I was intended to take care of everyone--”

“It’s not taking care of everyone if you’re only taking care of yourself,” Adam Young called out from the side of the hall.

“Actually, that’s true.” That was Wensleydale, chiming in. “My mum says that we’re supposed to respect people’s wishes when they die, not trample on them. The wishes, I mean, not the people, though probably them too, actually.”

Brian now: “It’s terribly rude, I think. Grown-ups are supposed to follow the rules. That’s why they get to make the rules.”

Pepper, not to be outdone: “It _is_ rude,” she declared with the firmness only eleven-year-olds can manage, glaring at him. “I fight with my little sister sometimes, you know, but even I would never do something as bad as making her think our mum didn’t love her.”

“Listen here, little girl,” Gabriel started, “you don’t know the first thing about any of this--”

“Nothing about being a _girl_ means I can’t understand what Mr Aziraphale read out in the car. And I know what it meant, what he read. It meant you’re in _trouble_.”

“I think it does,” Crowley agreed. “Because _this--_ _”_ he held up the will once again-- “appointed you executor, Gabriel. Which means you had a _duty_ , a legal obligation to carry out the terms of this will, and you didn’t, did you? Instead you used your position to try to steal from your own brother, and you were pretty good at it too, I’ll bet. You knew all the lies to tell, and you knew Aziraphale wouldn’t want to rock the boat, that he wouldn’t expect more from your mum than what you deigned to divvy out to him. Did you do the same to all your siblings, I wonder? Bleed them dry when their backs were turned?”

Something was sticking in Crowley’s brain, like a popcorn kernel stuck in his teeth. He watched Gabriel’s gaze flit between Aziraphale and Balder Brother, wiggling a proverbial tongue at it, trying to dislodge it. _There_ _’s eight of you?_ Crowley had asked.

_There_ _’s eight of you?_

_Yes, there_ _’s eight._

_As to the Sanctus Corporation, to each of my eight children--_

Crowley looked at the will in his hands, and he looked at Gabriel. And he turned back a page, and Gabriel’s grin faltered; and another page, and Gabriel’s grin turned rather sour; and then Crowley found what he was looking for.

“As to the Sanctus Corporation,” he read out loud, “To _each_ of my eight children, an equal and controlling share in the Corporation.”

“To each of us--to _me?_ ” Aziraphale asked, looking over Crowley’s shoulder at the page. “ _I_ should have gotten a share? But she knew I wouldn’t want it.”

“She knew you wouldn’t want control of it,” Crowley corrected, reading through the provisions. “She knew you’d be bogged down by it--gave you an out to abstain from all voting, which worked out because seven is an odd number for everyone else, you see? No tie-breakers needed. But she also knew that Sanctus was a healthy company, and that a share of it would have been income for the rest of your life, if you wanted it. Your mum died, what, fifteen years ago, did you say?”

Aziraphale nodded jerkily.

“So for fifteen years, Gabriel,” Crowley said, looking up to where Gabriel had turned more than a little green along his edges, “You not only made your own brother believe that you were in control of a property that was always rightly his, but you also deprived him of his fair shares of Sanctus. What kind of profits did you turn, these past fifteen years? A million pounds a year? Five million a year? What’s five million divided by eight, multiplied by fifteen?”

“Nine million, three hundred seventy-five thousand,” Anathema supplied from the sidelines.

“Nine _million_ ,” Crowley repeated, whistling. “Not to mention interest.”

Gabriel tried to rally. “There was a stipend instead,” he said, as if that would make up for Aziraphale’s losses. “And I paid the tax on the shop--”

“Nine million pounds worth of tax on the shop?”

“And insurance!”

“Oh, and _insurance,_ we can’t forget that. So that’s--serious violations of multiple fiduciary duties, fraud, conspiracy to commit fraud, conversion--treble damages, on that one, by the way-- _attempted_ fraud on these fine people over here--” he waved at Zuigiber, Sable, and White-- “and financial abuse at the very least. But hey, you paid the tax and the insurance, so it’s fine, right?”

Gabriel squeaked. It was extraordinarily satisfying.

Aziraphale, who had gone very very quiet once Anathema had started doing sums, took a little breath and came back into himself. He looked very much like he wanted to give Gabriel a two-fingered salute, which would’ve _delighted_ Crowley, but in the end he just drew himself up a little taller, and said, “You always were a _shit_ big brother.”

“And a shit landlord,” Anathema agreed. “I bet you do have evidence of my grandmother’s contract with Sanctus, don’t you? And you’ve just hid that as well. And that’ll mean we’ve got rights that have to be honoured before you can sell.”

“To sum it all up,” Crowley said, tossing the will down on to the table, “You’re going to prison, Gabriel.”

There was a ringing, impressive silence. Gabriel opened and closed his mouth several times, but nothing came out.

“What a _sucker_ ,” Adam Young said loudly, and really, there was nothing in the world like an eleven-year-old’s certain dismissal to rub salt in someone’s wounds. Gabriel didn’t even have the spine to look offended; instead he stumbled back and sat, like a puppet with cut strings, into an armchair. 

For a long moment, no one said anything, and then the room began, slowly, to disperse. Hastur and Ligur took the silence as an opportunity to slip out the door, papers clutched to their chests, whispering furiously the entire time and throwing the sort of looks at Gabriel that told Crowley they were going to be spending a lot of time tossing him under the proverbial bus; Dagon split away from Beez and the developers at the other end of the hall to pack her own things into what looked like a beach bag, avoiding Beez’s gaze.

The Them, getting the sense now that the adults had about wrapped up their argument, slowly and extremely casually began inching away from Newt and Anathema, obviously preparing an exploration. Madame Tracy, tucked over by the fireplace with Shadwell, cleared her throat and began was promised to be a mind-bendingly disapproving lecture.

Crowley didn’t give a fuck about any of them in that moment.

Aziraphale gasped in a shuddering breath against Crowley’s chest when Crowley swept him up into his arms, as if he’d forgotten how to breathe in the last few moments. The tension in his spine, in his shoulders, had him tied nearly to a breaking point. “Is it--?” he tried to ask, his voice shaking, “Is it?”

“It’s over,” Crowley assured him, kissing Aziraphale’s temple. “It’s really over. We’ve won.”

“Thank God,” Aziraphale murmured, the tension unspooling from his frame, leaving him loose-limbed and almost giggly in Crowley’s arms. He looked up, his blue eyes shining, and suddenly everything that had happened that long, difficult week--starting from the argument in the bookshop, at Crowley’s first confession, to the journey downward into Shadwell’s musty old cellar--seemed very far away.

“Thank _you_ ,” he said, against Crowley’s cheek. “You _saved us._ Thank you.”

“I rather think,” Crowley admitted softly, “that it was probably _you_ that saved me. From all of this. From who I was, who I was becoming.”

“Oh, Crowley,” Aziraphale said, pulling back a little to look him in the eye. His smile never faltered; his gaze never failed. “ _Anthony._ You saved _yourself_.”

Well, there was really nothing else for it. Crowley picked Aziraphale up, swinging him around in his arms, and then kissed him until they were both breathless and laughing, and then he kissed him one more time, just for good measure.

*

“Your intervention today prevented our fiscal disaster,” Raven Sable said. “And provided us with a path to recover significant damages for the loss of the property, if I’m not mistaken.”

Everyone else had already packed up their things and started making their way back to the front of the Manor, and Crowley stood alone before the three strange developers, much to Beez’s chagrin. She’d tried to insist that he was no longer representing them, but Carmine Zuigiber had merely tapped her crimson fingernail against her lip, a silent motion that demanded silence, and said, “Neither is Morningstar & Prince,” and that had been that.

“Your presentation earlier this week listed a number of available properties for potential redevelopment,” White added. “We’d be interested in hearing it again.”

“Oxfordshire is fast becoming a competitive market,” Zuigiber said. “We prefer, you understand, to win the competitions.”

Crowley stifled a laugh. “So, what? You’re offering that I work for you? Some sort of in-house counsel?”

Sable smiled a smile that was all teeth. “Our offer is a generous one,” he said. “Luxurious, one might say. Positively--” he looked among his colleagues, as if for confirmation, and his smile broadened--” _Gluttonous._ ”

Crowley actually snorted this time, before he could swallow it back. He’d never met anyone so incredibly dedicated to a _vibe_ , and here were three people cut from the same spooky cloth, as if they were starring in their very own horror show. _The Three Horsemen_ , they could call it--a reality telly sort of horror thing, where they forced people through inhumane trials for the honour of becoming the fourth. It’d be hit if it ever got made, and a probably a human rights violation to boot.

“What do you think, angel?” Crowley asked, shooting a sideways glance at Aziraphale, because of course he was still there at Crowley’s side. _Everyone else_ no longer meant Crowley against the entire world, and _standing alone_ was not something that Crowley was ever going to have to do again. Aziraphale was there now, and Crowley knew somewhere deep in his blood, in his bones, in his _heart_ , that Aziraphale always would be.

They were together in everything now. They were on their own side.

“I think,” Aziraphale said, after a considered pause, “that these good people can bloody well _sod off_.”

Crowley laughed. He laughed and laughed, and fell just that much more in love.

“Well,” he said, when he’d finally got his breath back, “you heard him. Have a good night, and I _do_ hope we never have the pleasure again.”

And then Crowley sketched a little mocking bow, turned on his heel, and led Aziraphale out hand-in-hand, never turning back to see the affronted faces on Zuigiber, Sable, & White. They didn’t matter anymore. They never would again.

“I do hope I didn’t overstep,” Aziraphale whispered to Crowley as they made their way through the halls, the front doors of the Manor opening onto the late afternoon sky. The sun was just playing with the horizon, gilding the landscape in pinks and golds, washing the world in warmth. “I understand you don’t have a position now, and if that was really what you wanted, you know, I’m sure you could go back and apologise for me--”

“Angel,” Crowley said, pulling him to a stop on the Manor’s front step, breathing in the clean air, listening to the Them whoop with laughter as they chased each other around the drive, deliberately in the way of an enormous white Land Rover that looked like it had Gabriel fuming behind the wheel. “You didn’t overstep. You were just enough of a bastard to be _perfect_.”

“Do you really think so?”

“I really do.”

Aziraphale grinned. “Then you, my dear, are just good enough of a person to leave all that behind. Don’t you think?”

Crowley had never really thought of himself as a good person before. The idea hit somewhere under his ribs, shining and sure, and he had to take a deep breath to feel the whole of it, to feel the breadth and the length and the weight of it, heavy in his chest, warm around his heart.

“I think,” he said, looking over at Aziraphale, “that’s who I _want_ to be.”

And Aziraphale _beamed_ at him, that beautiful sunshine beam with his heart laid out where Crowley could see it, in the light of his eyes and the curve of his lips; when Crowley kissed him, he could hear it, in every beat of their matching hearts, in every synchronising rhythm: _I love you, I love you._

_Ba-bum, ba-bum._

_I love you._


	24. Gifts

Word traveled fast in small towns. 

Word traveled _faster_ , it seemed, when it traveled via Madame Tracy. Crowley suspected there may have been a phone tree involved, or maybe just some good old-fashioned witchcraft; it seemed more prudent not to ask. 

They’d all piled into the cafe once they’d got back to the high street, bubbling with the champagne spark of victory in their stomachs and camaraderie in their bones. Anathema had insisted on cocoa, Newt had insisted on sandwiches, the Them had insisted on re-enacting Crowley’s take-down at Tadfield Manor as a high fantasy drama, and Crowley and Aziraphale’s attempts to peel themselves away for some much-needed rest and alone time had gone ceremoniously ignored.

“Oh, just for a moment,” Anathema had said, herding them through the door after everyone else like a sheepdog with a wayward flock. “You’ll have plenty of time to yourselves later, and we need to _celebrate_ , don’t you think?”

“I’d like to celebrate with a nap,” Crowley had muttered, but then Aziraphale had looked up at him with big, _oh, shouldn’t we though?_ eyes, and Crowley had caved like a house of cards. “Fine, fine,” he said to Anathema, pretending to be put upon. “Just for a quick minute.

And then the people started to come. 

They came at first in fits and starts, trickling in and taking off their jackets, settling in to catch up, but one by one the tables filled. Chairs were pushed together, re-arranged; someone turned on the tinny radio, filtering old nostalgic Christmas carols in over the growing murmur of voices, handshakes and hugs passed around as easily as hellos, cheeks pink with warmth and smiles as the good news moved from one group to the next.

_Haven’t you heard? The town is saved._

They had all come, it seemed. Half the town at least or more, and then they came for _him_ , sidling up to the booth and putting out their hands for him to take--Arthur and Deirdre Young, looking to fact-check their wayward son; R.P. Tyler, who assured Crowley he’d personally see to it that the _Tadfield Advertiser_ had a proper write-up of the thing; the gossipy pharmacist from the chemist’s down the road, who’d asked, not subtly enough, whether nine million hadn’t been an exaggeration; others Crowley only half-recognised and couldn’t name, who’d bussed him on the cheeks and squeezed his hands and winked at Aziraphale before melting away again into the crowd.

Crowley would have hated it, once.

He wasn’t entirely sure he didn’t hate it now, if he were honest: the noise and the crowd and the press of it all, the interruptions and the congratulations and the awkward digs for information about who and how much and for how long. It didn’t sit comfortably on his shoulders, the attention of it; he’d never been the sort of person that other people sought out, and the way they all turned to him now was overwhelming and strange.

But he also didn’t hate it, he thought, and the thought unfurled white and delicate and _new_ in his chest. He didn’t hate it at all.

Instead he felt like he was a _part_ of all of this, like he _belonged_ here, and Crowley had never belonged anywhere before, not really. He’d always reveled in the anonymity of London, and told himself that his small and isolated life was curated rather than lonely, but now--tucked into a corner booth and looking out over the cafe washed in the gold of fairy lights and shimmering tinsel, Aziraphale sitting across from him with that soft, proud smile, with those eyes that never looked away too long--Crowley knew he’d been lying to himself. 

There were people here who cared about him. There were people here that _he_ cared about, and wasn’t that something. 

He could make out Anathema’s bright smile where she held court behind the counter, slinging sodas and milkshakes, as well as Newt’s quiet, wide-eyed hellos at waving hands through the kitchen pass-through; he could see the flurry of Madame Tracy as she delivered perfunctory kisses to cheeks and platters piled high with chips and cheese toasties as fast as Newt could plate them, Shadwell trailing along behind her, and the yawns beginning to overtake the small faces of the Them.

They all slotted so neatly into place here, pressed shoulder to shoulder, laughing and talking and reaching, and Crowley had slotted in so readily beside them. He’d found a spot already carved out for him here, a spot he didn’t have to force his way into, and when he caught Aziraphale’s gaze through the dark lenses of his sunglasses, he knew he was _wanted_ here.

He knew he was _loved,_ and it was better than anything he’d ever known about himself before.

“All right?” Aziraphale asked quietly, reaching across the table to twine their fingers together. His hand was warm, and soft, and he held onto Crowley as if to anchor him in time and space. “You look like you’re drifting over there a little.”

“A bit,” Crowley admitted. He squeezed Aziraphale’s hand, reassuring him: _I’m all right here with you._ “I just didn’t expect--well. Any of this, really.”

“Hard to gossip about something if you weren’t there to see it,” Aziraphale quipped, but his smile was easy and genuine and terribly fond of the crowd bustling through the cafe around them. “That’s the thing about little villages, you know. You never miss a chance at something happening, which means everything’s happening to everyone, a bit. Looking after one another, being looked after.” He looked at Crowley, his grin going sly at the edges. “You’ve looked after them, you understand. Now it’s their turn to look after you.” 

“Suppose I’ll have to allow it,” Crowley tried to sigh magnanimously, but was grinning too broadly to quite pull it off, and then Aziraphale was pulling him in to kiss him across the table anyway, laughing and bumping noses. There were smudges on Crowley’s sunglasses when they sat back again, but Crowley thought it was worth it.

“You know,” Aziraphale said carefully, watching as Crowley pulled the glasses off to clean them on the hem of his shirt, twisted away toward the wall so no one caught sight of him, “You really don’t have to wear them, if you don’t want to. No one is going to mind.”

Crowley opened his mouth to laugh his dismissal, but Aziraphale looked at him so earnestly that he paused. _Everyone minds_ , he had been about to say, but that wasn’t true anymore, was it? 

Aziraphale didn’t mind. 

Crowley slipped the glasses back on, looked out over the room, considering it. Maybe there _was_ a question worth asking, he thought, picking out the familiar faces of their friends once more. _Their friends--_ his too, maybe, and maybe there was an answer he didn’t have to fear.

“I haven’t taken them off in public since I left home,” he said cautiously, letting Aziraphale take his hands again and stroke over the knuckles, soft and soothing.

“Yes, well,” Aziraphale said, calm and reasonable as anything, “whenever you’re ready, dear boy, but I’ve already said it once, and I did mean it.” His mouth tilted into a smile, and in the glow of the cafe he had eyes like watching the sun from underneath the water, and he looked at Crowley like he loved him. “Welcome home.”

*

“Excuse me! Excuse me, darlings, just a moment please!”

Crowley looked up, halfway through a meandering conversation with a twitchy local solicitor called Baddicombe who wanted very badly to get in on whatever plans Crowley might have had regarding the Sanctus Corporation and whom Crowley had been dodging rather deftly, if he did say so himself. Madame Tracy had climbed up onto a chair, one hand held steady by Newt as she waved to get everyone’s attention. Slowly the room turned to her, quieting into whispers and jostled shoulders, and she radiated an enormous grin down over them.

“As you all will have heard,” she began once the noise had hushed to a suitable level, “the proposed high street re-development in Tadfield has been canceled!”

The crowd whooped and whistled, and Crowley and Aziraphale laughed and cheered too, exhausted but buoyed by the rush in new excitement. It took Madame Tracy another moment to get everyone calmed down again.

“From all of us here on the high street,” she went on, sweeping her mug of coffee out to indicate the crowd themselves, “I want to say thank you to all of you good people, all of you who have supported this little stretch throughout the years and helped us all build a life here. And--” she lifted the mug toward Crowley and Aziraphale, still tucked away in their booth-- “From Tadfield, thank you to the person who made sure we’d all have a life here in the new year. Mr Anthony J. Crowley!”

Crowley froze, caught off-guard, but the crowd was shouting again, and Christ, it was a lot of noise, or maybe that was just the blood rushing in Crowley’s ears--then the shout resolved itself into something of a demand, yelling unison for _speech, speech, speech--_ and Aziraphale was jumping to his feet, pulling Crowley out of the booth as he tried, laughing helplessly, to decline--finding, without knowing how, that he was climbing up into the seat of the booth, one foot propped onto the table itself, looking out over the faces of Tadfield, every one of them gleaming back at him.

Aziraphale passed up his mug with the brightest smile of them all, and Crowley felt all the light as if it were shining from inside his chest, searing itself there, hot and permanent and _beautiful_. 

“Honestly, I was only doing my job,” Crowley said, a bit ridiculously, when he finally found the words to say anything at all. Public speaking had never been his forte; he wasn’t generally that polite, at least not intentionally, but everyone laughed anyway. “It’s you lot who’ve made this place something important, something worth saving, and coming here was--the greatest gift I could have gotten for Christmas this year. So tonight, if you’ve got to raise a glass, it ought to be to yourselves.”

He held up his coffee mug, and all across the cafe, glasses and mugs raised back to him.

“To families, and the places we may find them,” Crowley toasted, looking over them all with his chest tight and his voice full. “And to home, and the places we can make it for ourselves. And--” he looked down to Aziraphale, who had raised his cocoa, that thousand-watt smile just shining on and on and on-- “And to love,” he finished. “Just to love.”

The gathered crowd erupted, of course, joyfully and endlessly, and Crowley reached down to Aziraphale, couldn’t not be reaching to Aziraphale, who took Crowley’s hand and climbed up next to him, and Crowley kissed him as the crowd cheered them on, as glasses clinked together and as laughter rang out, as the noise rushed past them and the whole wide world faded away into nothing but _this--_ Aziraphale’s smile pressed against Crowley’s smile, Aziraphale’s heart pressed against his heart.

“I think it’s time to head out,” Aziraphale said, his nose nuzzling into Crowley’s, his hands full of Crowley’s hands.

“Yeah,” Crowley answered, his chest was so full he could hardly breathe, and it felt good and it felt right and it felt _true--_ to say it, to know it, to _believe_ it _._ “Let’s go home.”


	25. The Grinch

It was snowing in Tadfield again.

Crowley and Aziraphale stood on the pavement outside the bookshop, looking up at it: the dusty windows, the chipping paint, the faded sign that hung over all of it. _Unusual and Antiquarian Books._

“It’s funny,” Aziraphale said, his voice hushed and a little fragile, “I didn’t think it would be different, but it is, a little. Do you think it’s strange that it seems different?”

There were snowflakes in his eyelashes, and his hand was warm where their palms were clasped together, and Crowley was in love with him. He was almost getting used to the sensation in his chest--the heat of the _hello_ , the swelling, pressing-at-his-ribs joy of it--but only in a way that felt like he’d never _really_ be used to it.

“I think it _is_ different,” he told Aziraphale, squeezing his hand gently. “There’s nothing hanging over it anymore. For the first time, it’s actually _mine_.”

*

 _We ought to stop meeting this way,_ Crowley thought wryly, stepping into the bookshop after Aziraphale, taking in the ghostly stacks and shadowy aisles of the bookshop. _In the dark like this. Eventually I think I’d prefer to come in when it’s light. Take these first steps in with the sunshine._

The shop had a sort of new-old familiarity to it now: a certain tentative recognition, a certain cautious sense of knowing _where_ and _how_ everything fit together. There was a sort of glow to it, a heat, even in this quiet, crystalline dark, even with the snow floating past the windows and the books silent in their haphazard rows and the shadows stretching long throughout the maze of aisles. There was a _warmth_ to it.

It was a warmth that came from Crowley’s own chest, he understood. From the tangle of sparks and flames that licked around his breastbone, reaching out to follow Aziraphale into the dark.

Aziraphale, for his part, had stepped into the bookshop as though he’d never seen it before, wide-eyed and wondering, running his fingers over the leather-bound spines and dry, dusty pages, as if he hadn’t quite expected them to still be there. Crowley took his sunglasses off, hooking them into the neck of his shirt, and watched Aziraphale rediscover it all, the stacks and towers, the shelves and tables, the knick-knacks and manuscripts.

“This feels like a dream,” Aziraphale said, his voice soft with something like bewilderment, tracing the gold-foiled letters on a book of Shakespeare. “This feels like it can’t be real.”

Crowley stepped in close next to him, one hand on Aziraphale’s back, the other reaching out to line up over Aziraphale’s on the spine of the book. Their fingers slotted easily together, and after a moment Aziraphale leaned into Crowley, settling against him, letting Crowley steady him.

“It’s real, angel,” Crowley whispered into his hair, lips brushing against his temple, holding him close. “This is all yours. These books, this shop. It’s yours.”

Aziraphale turned into him, sliding his hands around Crowley’s waist. “It’s different,” he said again, “but not because of _her_ , I don’t think. My mother, I mean. Not really. It’s like--” He trailed off, twisted his mouth into a discomfited moue, his eyes trailing away.

Crowley waited. The sparks in his chest wanted to blanket over Aziraphale, to wrap him up and tuck him away from whatever thoughts he was struggling with, but he simply waited. _I am here_ , he told Aziraphale, speaking with his hands draped over Aziraphale’s shoulders and with his heart beating away against both their chests. _I’ll wait for you. will always wait for you._

“Is it awful,” Aziraphale finally asked, quiet and unsure but also a little-- _angry_ , Crowley thought, down deep underneath the rest. “Is it awful that I think it doesn’t matter? Whether she intended this all along. I _am_ furious with Gabriel for taking this from me, but she didn’t exactly protect me either. She didn’t tell me what she’d done.” He looked back at Crowley, his mouth set. “She should’ve told me. She at least could have _told me_.” 

It’s not always an easy thing, finding out you were loved.

It’s not always easy to look at the empty spaces of your life and to realise that there was love that could have filled them, if only someone had been braver, or stronger, or perhaps only less cruel. It’s not always easy to look back on the moments you were alone, and to reconcile them with someone who might have been there with you, if only they had reached out.

It’s not always easy to find out that you were loved without having known that love up close.

“I’m sorry she didn’t,” Crowley said, leaning his forehead against Aziraphale’s. “I’m sorry you were alone, angel.”

“I’m not alone now,” Aziraphale answered eventually. “I think that’s really all that matters, isn’t it?”

And Crowley could feel the ghost of his smile in the air between them--still tense, a little, around the edges, but Crowley could tell that the hurt and the pain in it wouldn’t last forever. There was too much happiness in Aziraphale; there was too much _light_ in him, a radiance in him that had caught Crowley’s attention even that very first day, standing in Anathema’s cafe with his wrist held in Aziraphale’s hand. He hadn’t been able to look away since.

He thought he would probably never look away again.

 _Welcome home,_ Crowley thought. _I love you._

*

“What do you think we ought to do next?” Aziraphale asked, once they had managed to navigate into the back room. He’d poured glasses of wine again, but they were going mostly untouched--Crowley had wrestled him down to the sofa, sitting with their legs entangled and their hands constantly reaching out to one another, stroking over one another, exploring the lines of each other’s palms. 

He’d left his sunglasses off. The light was dim, and Aziraphale looked at him with smiles that made him feel brave.

“Dunno,” Crowley said absently, shrugging. “Whatever we like, I expect. Whatever _you_ like. All of this is yours, angel. The shop, these books, all the opportunity in the world. Whatever you like.”

It felt like a gift to say it, a gift he could press into Aziraphale’s hands. He’d have to think about a job, of course, eventually--getting Aziraphale set up with an appropriate solicitor (one without the enormous conflict of interest created by being in love with him) and probably a barrister to help sort out all the Sanctus issues--the distance between London and Tadfield--the distance between the fast-paced, long-houred, high-pressured solicitor’s career and the slow, dusty stretch of days in this bookshop.

But this, _right now_ \--this was a gift he could breathe into being and give over to Aziraphale, and Crowley would give him all of it.

Right now, he had Aziraphale’s hands cradled in his. Aziraphale had soft hands, soft fingers, with a deep, thick lifeline, curving around the meat of his thumb. Crowley traced a fingertip over it--good luck, he hoped. Even an _eternity_ wouldn’t be long enough to spend with him, Crowley didn’t think, but perhaps a lifetime would be a good start. 

A lifetime. The thought made Crowley’s own hands start to sweat a little, but he could see it with surprising clarity: the way their two lives might stitch together, the way they might cobble together something like _moving forward._ Watching Aziraphale putter over old books and newspapers, picking out his bow -tie each morning, kissing him good morning, and good evening, and good night. Growing old with someone like Aziraphale, who lit up the dark and who laughed as often as he could and who touched him like he meant it.

He was probably getting ahead of himself. _Definitely_ getting ahead of himself. Being ridiculous, of course, obviously--but it was just a thought, a harmless thought, and Crowley liked the way it felt in his chest. 

Aziraphale closed his fingers over Crowley’s then, jolting him out of his reverie, and when Crowley looked up, he had the softest smile anyone had ever worn on his face, as though he could tell what Crowley was thinking, and liked the way it felt in _his_ chest too.

“I think,” Aziraphale said slowly, consideringly, watching him. “I think . . . I’m going to kiss you. And then I think I might ask if you’ve anywhere to stay tonight.” He leaned in, pressing a kiss to Crowley’s fingers without taking his eyes off Crowley’s eyes. “And then,” he went on, and that soft, gentle smile turned a little wicked on the edges, “if it’s not too forward, I think I might suggest that perhaps you stay here. With me.”

Crowley grinned back. “Is that so,” he asked, leaning in a little too, watching Aziraphale’s eyes as they tracked the curve of his mouth. “And what will you do with me, hidden in the maze of this little shop of yours? Tuck me away with your biographies? Keep me stacked among your poetry for safekeeping?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” Aziraphale said, his smirk melting into something devastatingly earnest as he traced a line along Crowley’s jaw. “I’m going to _love_ you,” and then he kissed Crowley.

And it was easy, to kiss Aziraphale like this.

It was _easy_ to kiss Aziraphale like this, to be kissed by Aziraphale like this: to press and pull and drift away and drift back again, slow and deep and careful and certain and hopeful and _tender;_ it was easy to let himself be pressed back into the sofa cushions, to let himself be covered and held and wanted, to be clutched close and to be _learned_ , secret after secret unraveling beneath Azirpahale’s hands. It was easy to _breathe,_ and to _move_ , and to _touch;_ it was easy to give himself up to it, to let himself sink down into it, lost in the slide of Aziraphale’s mouth and Aziraphale’s hips and the rush of Azirpahale’s heart pressed so close against his.

Aziraphale kissed him like he _knew_ Crowley, like he _trusted_ Crowley, like he already trusted that there would be _time_ after this, that there would be days after this day and nights after this night. Aziraphale kissed Crowley like he _believed_ in Crowley, and it was easy to let himself believe in Aziraphale too--to believe in easy, to believe in slow, to believe in tenderness, to believe they could kiss like this until the end of time because they _had_ the time, with nowhere else to go and no one else to answer to and no other way to _be_ other than the way they were together.

They were together. That was everything Crowley needed to believe in.

“I am too, you know,” Crowley said, between kisses, laughing a little at the light building deep inside him. “I am too.”

Aziraphale drew back, just a little, brushing the hair back out of Crowley’s eyes. He had laugh lines, so close Crowley could count each one. “You’re what?”

Crowley pulled him back down, pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth, breathing in against his skin. 

“Yours,” he said, closing his eyes. “I’m yours. 

* 

There was a little flat above the bookshop.

Crowley might not have noticed that it wasn’t actually _part_ of the bookshop if he hadn’t followed Aziraphale up a flight of stairs with a locked door at the top. The stairs had been stacked with books and books; the flat was too, piled with anthologies and rare editions and boxed sets and even textbooks, complete collections of Conan Doyle and elaborately illustrated Brothers Grimm, philosophy bundled in with mechanical guides and espionage thrillers. Scattered over the piles were old records and cassettes and decks of cards, miniature globes and plaster statuettes of Shakespeare and Wilde, framed postcards and mantle clocks with batteries that had long since run out.

It looked exactly like Crowley expected it to, and he loved every inch of it.

Aziraphale fidgeted in the middle of the kitchen, watching Crowley take it all in with nervous eyes; Crowley answered the unspoken question by backing him up against the kitchen worktop and kissing him soundly. 

“It’s exactly like you,” Crowley said, draping himself over Aziraphale’s frame. He was a little too lanky for it, a little too exhausted, but Aziraphale wrapped his arms around Crowley’s waist anyway and kept him upright. “Fussy and chaotic at the same time. It’s perfect. I love it.” 

“I’m not fussy,” Aziraphale protested, nudging his face into Crowley’s neck and kissing him there, and it was such an outrageous, unfounded objection that Crowley laughed out loud. “I’m _not_.”

“I _love_ it,” Crowley repeated over him, grinning like a loon and not even trying to stop. “It’s a good look on you.”

Aziraphale pulled his face back at that, squinting up at Crowley. He’d turned on the hall light when they’d come in, but otherwise the kitchen was still dark, lit only by moonlight and the digital display on the microwave. “It’s a good look on you, too,” he said, and when he kissed Crowley this time, Crowley could feel the smile on his mouth, settling over his. “We should go to bed,” he added. “We’re both so tired we can barely stand.”

“That your best pick-up line?”

“Is it going to work? I could think of a better one if I really had to.”

“You had me at _bed_ , if I’m honest. Lead on, angel.”

It was so easy to follow him through the flat, to follow him down to the bedroom with the huge, plush bed swimming with pillows and blankets, as if they both knew he belonged; it was so easy to giggle and exchange their worst pick-up lines instead of worrying about whether he was welcome here, in the most intimate of Aziraphale’s spaces. About whether he was moving in the right way, appearing in the right way, about whether he was being seductive enough or smooth enough or _good enough_ as they sat together on the end of the bed and toed their shoes off, stripped their socks off. It was so easy strip down to their underthings and slide under the covers together, to find each others hands and press close together to warm the sheets up.

“I never liked Christmas,” Crowley confessed quietly, safe in the sheltered dark, tucked close to Aziraphale with his eyes closed. They hadn’t been talking about it, but he’d been thinking about it--the snow outside, the crackling carols, the miracle of Aziraphale himself. “Felt--fake, somehow. False happiness sold by corporations, bought by people pretending they cared about each other that didn’t really care about each other. Bunch of bollocks.”

“Mm.” Aziraphale held him closer, tighter. “And now?”

He opened his eyes looking at Aziraphale in the soft blue dark. “Did you know,” he asked, very seriously, trying to keep the smile out of his voice though he may have failed a bit more than he’d have liked, “that love is actually a _real_ thing? Took me by surprise, if I’m honest. Thought it was just the adverts having me on.”

Aziraphale huffed out a laugh. “Is that what they tell you big city boys? No wonder you’re all frowns whenever you lot come to town.”

“Think it makes all our hearts two sizes too small,” Crowley sighed, and this time he was only half-joking. “And I think that all the people I knew in London were probably great big bloody wankers, too.”

“Only _probably?_ ” Aziraphale asked with mock-incredulity, squeezing Crowley’s hands in his-- _I’m here, I’m here_ \--making them both giggle a little. He held onto Crowley even after the giggles faded. “That story ends with the Grinch’s heart growing three sizes, you know.” 

“Yeah, well.” Crowley put a hand to his chest, rubbing, and scrunched his nose. “Actually, it does feel a bit pinched in there. Like I’ve got a big hot air balloon stuffed inside.”

“Where? Here?” One of Aziraphale’s hands joined his, smoothing over Crowley’s breastbone.

Crowley moved it a little, over his heart; he wondered if Aziraphale could feel it, slow and easy. “Yeah, right about--”

“I’d better kiss it better, don’t you think?”

Aziraphale did, leaning in and dipping his head under the blankets, pressing his lips to Crowley’s chest, breathing warm through his shirt. Crowley laughed, holding the back of Aziraphale’s neck.

“Actually, I think the kiss goes more like--” He guided Aziraphale’s head back up as he curled down to meet him, and the kiss was soft and lovely and gentle, a confession and a promise both, and Crowley held Aziraphale to him for a moment, memorising the feel and the taste and the heat of him, memorising the touch and the sound and the light of him. 

_It’s real,_ Crowley thought. _This is all real. You’re here._

The room was quiet, aside from the sound of their breathing, the sound of the feet moving under the covers. Little familiarities: the soft comforts of someone lying close to you. Aziraphale’s hand drifted to Crowley’s wrist, to that same place he’d caught him on that very first day, brushing a thumb over the delicate skin there on the inside. 

“You know,” Aziraphale murmured, when Crowley was half-asleep already, “if you stay, you’ll have to think of a song to sing at next year’s carol karaoke.” 

“Mm.” Crowley blinked his eyes back open. “Sing? What?”

“At carol karaoke. Next year. I bet you’ve got a lovely voice.” 

“Will I?” Crowley asked, closing his eyes again. “I don’t know very many carols, actually. Maybe one or two.” 

“Which one’s your favourite?” 

“Heard an angel singing _O Holy Night_ once. That one ranks pretty high on the list, but I don’t think it’s really up for grabs.” 

Aziraphale huffed a laugh, breathy and low, and pushed at Crowley’s shoulder. “Come on. What will you sing?” 

This time Crowley really looked at him, and he could see it for what the question really was: _will you still be here to sing at all? am I being foolish, here in the dark?_

Crowley rolled up onto one elbow, looking down at Aziraphale seriously. He was beautiful, here in the dark, highlighted in shadows and the soft violet light sneaking in past the curtains. _I’m here, I’m here,_ he hoped his eyes said, his hands on Aziraphale’s hands. _I’m always going to be here._

“There is one I know,” Crowley said out loud. “Don’t know that it’s a carol, really, but they do play it at Christmastime, I suppose. I’ll sing it, if you like.” 

Aziraphale tilted his chin up, looking about as academic as anyone could while lying in an undershirt in bed. “Go on, then.” 

Crowley took a deep breath, trying to remember all of the words, and then he leaned down and sang, in a whisper, “ _You’re a mean one, Mr Grinch. You really - are a - heel! You’re as cuddly as a cactus, you’re as charming as an eel, Mr Gri-inch! You—_ ”

He didn’t finish. Aziraphale surged up instead, cutting him off with a kiss, all relief and joy and love and love and _love_ , kissing him and kissing him, and Crowley followed him down. 

*

Anthony J. Crowley loved a lot of things, and he was very good at it.

That was not to say that he didn’t still hate tourists, tacky souvenir shops, cameras that made a big clicking sound when their buttons were pressed, gossip mags, the royal family, adverts that strobed unholy light at innocent people just trying to walk down the street, incompetent drivers, scented soaps and hand lotions in hotel rooms, scratchy shirts, dating apps, book editions that used a corresponding film poster as cover art, people who were early to meetings, people who were late to meetings, pop music, burnt coffee from popular chain cafes that would have over-roasted their beans if the beans were equipped with klaxon alarms to tell when they were done, and galoshes: he’d spent a lot of time honing that special skill, and he still very much had it. 

Perhaps less emphatically than he had before, though. Not that he was apathetic about things--it was just that being in love was _better_ than any of that, and Crowley had always been very good at prioritising. 

He loved Aziraphale’s hands, and his crowded flat, and the way he made toast in the mornings with butter and apple preserves; he loved the warmth of Aziraphale’s jumper settling over his shoulders and the cosiness of curling up in Azirpahale’s back room, listening to him putter around the shop, and the way the shop looked in the morning light, coming back to it with paper cups of coffee and cocoa from the cafe, even with all its chipped paint and dusty windows. He loved catching lunch with Newt and Anathema, and dinner with Madame Tracy and Shadwell; he loved catching Zuigiber, Sable & White on their way out of town, a moving van trucking along behind them as they left Tadfield behind. 

He wasn’t sure that he _loved_ Christmas, but--Aziraphale lit up by fairy lights, Aziraphale with cheeks pink in the cold, Aziraphale with an extremely ridiculous foil halo that the Them had gifted him, and the Santa hat they’d pressed onto Crowley himself--Crowley thought it’d probably grow on him. 

“So, Christmas,” Aziraphale said, a day or two later. “Thoughts?”

Crowley looked up at him, curled in his usual spot--his _usual spot_ \--on the sofa in the back room, where he’d been exchanging exceptionally _polite_ and therefore unnatural emails with Beez over a severance plan that was being offered in unofficial, begrudging thanks for saving Morningstar & Prince’s arses in the failed Tadfield deal. It was bright, so he was wearing his glasses, but he hadn’t been wearing them all the time. “It’s next Wednesday.” 

“Got any plans?”

He hadn’t quite looked up from his book, but Crowley could see that he was being watched from the corner of Aziraphale’s eye. It was the tense shoulders: dead giveaway. 

“Er, yeah,” Crowley said, putting his mobile aside. “Yeah, I do actually.” 

Aziraphale looked up, his expression going completely blank in one fell swoop. “Oh? Oh, of course you do.” 

“Yeah,” Crowley went on. “I make a _fantastic_ brioche French toast. Rashers--not my specialty but I can manage it. Orange juice--I wonder if I can get Anathema to let me into the cafe so I can get a cocoa? And then I think that afternoon Madame T said something about nibbles down the pub. I could be wrong but considering that she was telling me about it while you were off in Oxford for the afternoon doing something I wasn’t supposed to think was getting me a Christmas gift, I’m _pretty_ sure I was invited. _Your_ present, by the way, was delivered from Amazon at Anathema’s yesterday, but I still have to wrap it.” 

The tension had drained out of Aziraphale’s shoulders while Crowley talked, and his expression--briefly so horribly vacant--had tilted slowly into a grin, growing and growing, until he was giving Crowley that beautiful, brilliant beam of a smile.

“You’re planning to be here,” he said, a little breathlessly.

Crowley reached up and took his sunglasses off, studying his smile, his hands, his shining eyes. “That all right?” 

“More than all right,” Aziraphale answered, leaning down to kiss him. “It’s perfect.”

If Crowley imagined the future, it looked a lot like this: sitting together in Aziraphale’s back room, wearing his jumpers with paper cups of coffee and cocoa; making Aziraphale smile like he’d swallowed the sun and laugh like he’d tricked Heaven itself; with Crowley’s own chest alight and his own hands reaching, catching Aziraphale’s as they reached back; finding each other in these dusty stacks and these cosy rooms, in this place called _home_ , loving and laughing and holding on--forever.

Crowley loved that too. 

*


	26. Epilogue: Aziraphale

_Christmas Eve_

_*_

There was light.

Aziraphale turned his face toward it, basking in it a little. The morning sun streaming in through the lace curtains was bright and clean and felt like a promise, thick with an undercurrent of warmth and wonderment--although, Aziraphale reflected, smiling to himself, that could just be the feeling in his own chest, spilling out.

It was doing rather a lot of that these days--spilling out, spilling over. There was just so much of it; Aziraphale could hardly be expected to keep track.

Crowley was still asleep on the other side of the pillows, gilded in copper and gold by the new sunlight. The weight of his body wrapped in the covers, the steady rise and fall of his breath--it was unbearably intimate, the feeling of _getting used_ to him there, getting used to him lying close like that, to the the stretch of his body and the rhythm of his dreams, and it burned in Aziraphale’s chest like the flare of a star.

Aziraphale loved him.

The feeling was brilliant and terrible and ferocious and grand, curling around Aziraphale’s spine and settling like a comfort in the insides of his elbows. Crowley was beautiful and he was quick and he was funny and he was patient and he was annoying, sometimes, and he was troubled, in others, and he relied too much on himself and he scarcely knew how to _be_ loved, as if no one had ever done it before, but he had such _hope_ in him and such trust and such heart, and Aziraphale did, oh, Aziraphale loved him.

There was a shift, then. A soft whisper of movement in the sheets, a question forming into wakefulness, and Aziraphale opened his eyes because Aziraphale _loved_ him, and he didn’t want to miss it, he didn’t want to miss a single moment of it: of Crowley, coming to life, blinking awake in the early sunshine.

“Mgughg,” said Crowley, scrunching his nose, and Aziraphale huffed a laugh through his nose and loved him a little bit more.

“Good morning,” he whispered, reaching with a gentle hand across the pillowcases to shield Crowley’s eyes from the sunshine. “Bit bright today, isn’t it?”

“Bit,” Crowley agreed, his voice thick with sleep. It took a few moments, but eventually his eyes opened more fully, more easily under the shadow of Aziraphale’s hand; Crowley reached for it, pressing a kiss to the palm and looking up at him. “Morning, angel.”

Crowley’s eyes were magnificent like this: illuminated by the morning sun, an amber so light there was a sense of translucency about them. The notches in his irises, strange and distinctive, made his eyes look open and knowable and _clear_ , and if Aziraphale loved him any more, he’d have to take some rather serious steps toward keeping Crowley forever.

Forever was a long time, though; no doubt it would keep until after breakfast.

“It’s Christmas Eve,” Aziraphale said, instead of something rash. “What should we do to celebrate, eh?”

“I can think of one place we can start,” Crowley said, offering a sleepy smile as he slid closer across the pillows, nuzzling his nose along Aziraphale’s. “Your first present of the day, I think.”

Aziraphale laughed, slipping one arm over Crowley’s waist to hold him close. He was warm under the sheets, sleep-soft and tender, and it was easy to tangle together, to slot into increasingly familiar places against each other. “Only the first?”

“The first of many,” Crowley promised, kissing him with the shape a smile still on his mouth. He kissed Aziraphale slowly, taking his time with it, sinking down into it. It was the sort of kiss that lasted and lasted until it didn’t, and there was barely a line between kissing and not until they were simply laying together on Aziraphale’s pillow, their eyes closed and foreheads pressed together, breathing.

“Are you happy?” Crowley asked, nudging Aziraphale’s nose with his. “Right now, are you happy?”

Aziraphale smiled. “I am happier than I have ever been in all my life,” he answered, and Aziraphale loved him, loved him, loved him.

*

It was a slow, lazy sort of day, and Aziraphale sank down into it, stretching his hands into all the corners of it. They puttered around the flat for a while, eating toast and drinking tea, exchanging kisses that tasted like jam and tannins--“Present for you,” Crowley would say, bending to press his mouth to Aziraphale’s--but eventually they found their way out into that brilliant morning sunshine.

Tadfield was unexpectedly busy, with everyone finishing up their last-minute errands before everything closed for the holiday. The pavements were bustling with late shoppers and laughing teenagers cut loose for the day, and Tadfield seemed to shine under the attention, alive and bright and full of goings-on.

Aziraphale hadn’t seen it so energetic and bustling in years, it seemed, and watching Crowley saunter on ahead of him, waving briefly at Arthur Young and Ted Dowling, he thought perhaps it had just been lying dormant, waiting for someone to come along and poke at it, to question its certainty, whether it _had_ to be the way it was--for someone to love it, and spark it into waking.

That’s what Crowley had done, in the end. He’d loved Tadfield the way that everyone else had forgotten how, and he’d brought it into life.

“Coming, angel?” Crowley called, already holding the door the cafe open, and Aziraphale bustled to catch up. “All right?”

“Perfectly,” Aziraphale said, and together they ducked inside, where Crowley and Anathema traded barbs at one another and Newt pressed a paper bag of fresh scones into Aziraphale’s hands, refusing anything in exchange.

“Happy Christmas,” he said instead, with that wide-eyed, good-natured way of his. “You and Crowley have given us enough this year already, I think. The least we can do is a couple of the cranberry orange set for you.”

“Will we see you tonight?” Anathema asked Crowley, as she pushed their usual coffee and cocoa across the counter at him. “Starts at eight, I think.”

“Wouldn’t be caught dead, cafe girl,” Crowley declared, dumping milk and sugar into his cup. “I’ll be too busy practicing black magic and seducing townfolk, as well I’m sure you’ve heard.”

“Shadwell might have mentioned something,” she agreed, fighting hard not to laugh. “Incorrigible sod. Aziraphale, don’t share your scones with him, he’s been terrorising the village.”

“He will,” Crowley smirked.

“I most certainly will not,” Aziraphale shot back, even though he certainly would, and he couldn’t help but to beam at the two of them together. They’d made friends so easily with one another, though Aziraphale wondered if Crowley had even realised it yet. He didn’t seem like he’d had very many friends in London; he didn’t seem like he’d ever had very many friends at all.

Alone: that’s what Crowley had been. All that heart, and all that hope, and all that curiosity, and he’d been alone.

Crowley had loved Tadfield into life, Aziraphale thought, watching the two of them spar over whether Crowley was going to pay for anything or whether Anathema was going to give them the scones and the coffee and cocoa on the house as a little Christmas gift. Tadfield was going to love him back whether he realised it, whether he _believed it_ , or not.

Aziraphale was going to love him until he did.

*

They spent several hours in Shadwell’s miserable basement storage, rifling through Aziraphale’s mothers things; Crowley had overridden Shadwell’s protests several days before by giving him a rather harsh look with his sunglasses pulled down the bridge of his nose. “I thought you didn’t like people to think they were threatening,” Aziraphale had said, but Crowley had only shrugged and grinned.

“Usually, yeah,” he’d said, “but it’s not very often that I get to make someone think I’m _actually_ an evil witch, and it seemed like a lot more fun than arguing with him over it all.”

Aziraphale had given him a disapproving look, but he had to admit it was, at the very least, faster.

Not very many of the memories that had been packed into these trunks were happy ones, though, and Crowley stayed close, only reaching for things Aziraphale asked to see, letting his hands be guided rather than giving the reins to his curiosity. Aziraphale went through them one by one, remembering what he could of her; he found that most of his memories were blotted out now, as if there was a light that was brighter, drowning her out.

“What will happen to these books I give you, Aziraphale?” she’d asked him once, the only time she’d ever visited the shop before she’d passed. He couldn’t remember what he’d told her, but he knew she’d never said a word about her will. She’d never asked about what might happen to _him._

“Aziraphale,” Crowley said quietly, putting a hand over his and jolting him out of his thoughts. “You don’t have to do this, you know. You don’t have to keep looking for her. Maybe it’s time to spend some time looking for yourself.”

Aziraphale looked at him, at Crowley’s hand on his, at his gentle eyes behind his lenses. Crowley, who had not seen the shadows that Aziraphale’s family might have preferred him to be, and who did not see the ghosts at Aziraphale’s back; Crowley, who had seen Aziraphale as he was, already whole and corporeal the way he _chose_ to be, and who had loved him.

“I don’t need to keep looking,” Aziraphale said finally. “Not for her, and not for me, either. Tell Shadwell he can sell the lot of it--she was not a witch, and she doesn’t have any power anymore.”

*

They went back to the shop, wrapping themselves up in the familiar to settle the last jumping nerves in Aziraphale’s hands. Crowley hovered a little as Aziraphale re-shelved his mother’s Bible collection, undone in those hurried hours of desperation the week before, but it was more comforting than anything else to have him there, close by.

“Present for you,” he said, diving in for a kiss once they’d settled among the old Bibles, as if to excuse himself.

Aziraphale let him. “Yes,” he said, kissing him again. “I rather think you are.” 

Crowley wrinkled his nose around his grin. “That’s inexcusably cheesy.”

“You love it.”

“I don’t.”

“You do.”

“I love _you_ , angel,” Crowley said, between kisses. “There’s a difference.”

Aziraphale laughed, kissing him one more time. “I love you too.”

Crowley hung about the shop, a steady presence among the stacks, picking up books at random from the shelves and reading bits out loud. Eventually he hooked his glasses back into the neck of his shirt as the light died, where he liked to keep them when he wasn’t wearing them--it made him look awfully dashing, which Aziraphale _had_ to tell him, and then they’d lost a good ten minutes or so making out against a shelf of old Charles Dickens’ editions. They had cheese toasties for dinner, sitting together on Aziraphale’s sagging old sofa, laughing over old movies; Crowley drifted into a nap for a while against Aziraphale’s chest as Aziraphale read out of an old copy of _Arabian Nights._

It was easy, spending time like this with him. It was domestic and comforting, and Aziraphale stroked Crowley’s hair as he slept and thought about him leaving, going back to London, finding another job, working longer hours. Traveling back and forth to spend weekends together, the clock on their time always counting down; their conversations dwindling to hurried phone conversations and text messages.

It wouldn’t last forever, this sort of peaceful sanctuary they had built for themselves in the last couple of days, in this holiday-tinged, rose-coloured world they had retreated into. Eventually the real world would come crashing back in, and there would be obligations and responsibilities, and things would get difficult again.

Aziraphale wanted things to get difficult with Crowley still by his side, holding his hand, leading him through. He wanted things to get difficult where he could be there at the end of the day, taking Crowley into his arms and holding him for a moment in silence, letting him breathe until he found his footing again. He wanted things to get difficult when he knew there would be a safe place here for the both of them, built with hope and happiness, with laughter and trust and tenderness, holding them together until the storm had passed.

Aziraphale wanted to love him when it was difficult and love him when it was easy and love him through the nights and the days and the boring afternoons and the thrilling evenings and the slow mornings; he wanted to love Crowley when he was hurting and pretending like he wasn’t and when he was grinning all over the place and when he was cut down by the pressure building in his head and when he was stirring risotto in the kitchen, singing along to some old bebop song playing on the radio, shooting winks at Aziraphale from behind his sunglasses.

He wanted to love Crowley until the end of the world, and beyond it.

He thought maybe Crowley wanted to love him back.

*

“Aziraphale? We’re going to be late, angel.” Crowley emerged from the bedroom, pulling Aziraphale’s jumper over his head, his hair gone askew. Ivory wasn’t really his colour, but the sight of him in it never failed to take Aziraphale’s breath away; he stepped in to kiss his appreciation for it right into Crowley’s mouth. “Late, angel,” Crowley repeated against his lips, muffled, but he was grinning.

“Fine, fine,” Aziraphale huffed, grinning back. “Let’s go.”

It had gone dark several hours ago now, all the shops closed up, the cafe and the pub already shuttered, but the high street was still bright enough with the street lamps and fairy lights, and the old loudspeaker system still piped carols into the night. Crowley and Aziraphale set out slowly, passing through the quiet of the town, cutting through the darkened park--pausing, briefly, to kiss behind the Big Willow, laughing and shushing one another--toward the hill with the little church settled on top.

“Before, when this happened at the Manor,” Crowley asked as they made their way, hand-in-hand, “you can’t all have walked up there just for a tree lighting.”

“We’d have already been up there, most of us,” Aziraphale answered. “There’d have been a big party, a proper Christmas ball, free for anybody who lived in Tadfield. We’d have walked from the Manor out to the big tree, all together. Couple hundred yards, not far. Just far enough from the house that the lights weren’t a bother.”

The tree lighting had always been Aziraphale’s favourite holiday tradition, actually--turning on the light in the dark, illuminating something and giving it a shape it hadn’t had before. And now he would get to share it with Crowley, who had given him his own shape in the shop, and the strength to save it, and the love to fill it with.

More people were appearing now, at the edges of the night, streaming together toward the church, its huge dark pine tree waiting in the churchyard. Some of them were carrying candles or torches, others lit the way with their mobile phones, the dots of light illuminating the paths toward the gathering on the hill. There was something ancient and comforting in it, something that spoke to Aziraphale’s bones: the act of following in paths already lit, the act of joining together for the ritual of light.

“Oh, Aziraphale, Crowley, we’re so glad you could make it,” Madame Tracy said when they finally reached the churchyard and found everyone, kissing both their cheeks. “New love, now I know what that’s like, so hard to pull yourselves away--”

“Here,” Shadwell interrupted gruffly, which was possibly the kindest thing Shadwell had ever done in his life. He pressed tall white candles into their hands, with little paper circles around the bottoms to protect their hands. “For the lighting.”

“Two minutes to go,” Newt announced.

This was the busiest Aziraphale had seen the tree lighting in ages, and he looked around at everyone gathered there, brought forth once more in celebration after Crowley had saved them all, and more than they all knew. The Them stopped by, pushing Warlock Dowling forward to shake hands with everyone as the newest member of their squad following a triumphant defection from Greasy Johnson’s; they waved hellos to Arthur and Deirdre, who Crowley thanked for the use of an overhead projector; a few others stopped by simply to clap Crowley on the arm and offer congratulations, which he accepted as gracefully as he could, though he seemed a bit nonplussed by it all.

Affection bloomed warm in Aziraphale’s chest, watching him here, watching these people accept Crowley so easily and so thoroughly into their lives. He fit so well here, in Tadfield. He could belong here, if he would stay.

“I was right, you know” Aziraphale overhead Anathema saying just then, a little low beneath the noise of the crowd. He threw a glance over his shoulder to find her standing next to Crowley at the low stone wall of the churchyard, their arms crossed in unison.

Crowley smiled in that trying-not-to-smile way he had. “Which time?”

“All of them,” Anathema answered, smirking; well, Crowley had walked right into that one. “But specifically--the one about the you being the person he deserved on his side.”

 _Oh, Anathema,_ Aziraphale thought. _You dear thing._

Crowley lowered his head for a moment, that trying-not-to smile getting away from him--he’d not been expecting that, Aziraphale realised, and wasn’t sure quite what to do with it. Finally Crowley reached up, and, for the first time in front of Anathema, for the first time in public here in Tadfield, he slid his sunglasses off, folding them in his hands and slipping them into his inner jacket pocket.

“I don’t know about _deserve_ ,” he told her quietly, looking her right in the eye the way he did when he was being deliberately, almost painfully honest. “But he was on _our_ side. Together. All I had to do was meet him there.”

“I think you did more than that,” Anathema said easily, reaching out to pat his arm. “But I’m glad, for you both. You both deserve someone to stand with. I’m glad you found the one you want to stand with.” 

“One minute!” Newt called, before Aziraphale could do something to ruin the moment, like burst into tears or suffocate them both in a hug. “Lights out!”

One by one the candles and the mobile phones in the crowd all went dark, and everyone fell silent as they pressed together, close and intimate with their breaths visible in the chill of the night, their faces turned up to look at the dark shadow of the tree, pale and tinged blue in the dark. Crowley’s hand found Aziraphale’s again, and when Aziraphale turned to look up at him, Crowley’s eyes were already looking back and he gave that soft, secret half-smile he had sometimes, and the love swelled up so wild and hot and whole and beautiful in Aziraphale’s chest that he was suddenly _breathless_ with it.

“Stay with me,” Aziraphale said.

Crowley blinked at him. “What?”

“Stay with me,” Aziraphale repeated, and then he was whispering quickly, hurriedly, his heart beating through the palms of his hands and the insides of his elbows, driving him further, faster, _needing_ Crowley to understand. “Stay here, in Tadfield. We can, we can move your things down, and put all your plants up in the flat, I’ll--I’ll take some of the books out, make sure you have enough space. Or we can get a bigger place, or you can even get your own place, for a while, if you just want to test it out--you could join up with one of the local solicitors here, or even go up to Oxford if you want something bigger, or hang out your own shingle or--or--”

Azirpahale caught his breath, and looked up at Crowley again. There was more he could say, more he could use to try and persuade, but it really came down to one thing, to one simple thing.

“I love you,” Aziraphale said. “Stay with me.”

And then there was the sound of a switch being thrown, echoing into the silence, and there were lights--lights flaring into life, line after line after line, spiraling up the tree, lighting up the dark with a warm, white glow, all the way up to the star at the very top, bright and shining. There was the sound of the crowd reacting in wonder, of everyone who’d come together looking up together, illuminated, with awe. There was the sound of lighters and matches, and _here, here, hold it here,_ as everyone lit their candles once more, the light spreading out throughout the crowd, everyone holding up their own little light until the whole churchyard _glowed_ , radiant and dazzling and dazzling in the night.

Crowley was not looking at the tree. He was looking at Aziraphale. “You haven’t known me that long,” he said finally.

Aziraphale did not look away. “I’ve known you _forever_ ,” he said fiercely.

“I might have terrible bathroom habits.”

“I’m sure you’re a proper terror.”

There was a grin starting at the corner of Crowley’s mouth, at the corners of his eyes. “It might not work out, in the end.”

“But it might,” Aziraphale said. “It might. You can’t tell me that’s not worth the risk.”

Crowley was quiet for a moment, turning to watch the tree glitter and gleam against the snow, to listen to the flutter of Madame Tracy and Shadwell and Newt and Anathema surrounding them, to feel the press and laughter of the crowd, of Tadfield, of this place that he loved and helped save and this place he could stay, if he wanted. This place he could belong, if he wanted.

He looked back at Aziraphale, studying him for the space of one breath, then two, and then Crowley kissed him.

It felt like _our side._ It felt like _I_ _’m here._ Crowley kissed him, slow and soft and sweet, and then harder, deeper, wrapping his arms around Aziraphale and kissing him, laughing against his mouth and kissing him, and it felt like the end of the world and the beginning of it, as if everything that had led up to this moment had been _before_ , and this would be _after._ It felt like _welcome home._

Crowley stayed.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who has stuck with this fic so long after the Christmas season, with everything that's happened - I can't tell you what your support has meant to me! It's been a wild ride and I'm thrilled to finally be finishing this up! <3

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on Tumblr @[forineffablereasons](http://forineffablereasons.tumblr.com), or on my main @[watsonshoneybee](http://watsonshoneybee.tumblr.com)!


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